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Those known to have served at RAF Wigtown during the Second World War 1939-1945. The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed,
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Add a Name to this List
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The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.
Announcements
- The Wartime Memories Project has been running for 24 years. If you would like to support us, a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting and admin or this site will vanish from the web.
- 18th April 2024 - Please note we currently have a huge backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263925 your information is still in the queue, please do not resubmit, we are working through them as quickly as possible.
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- The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors. If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web.
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Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the War? Our
Library contains an ever growing number diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text. |
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Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to WW2. We would like to obtain digital copies of any documents or photographs relating to WW2 you may have at home. If you have any unwanted
photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them.
The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted.
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Did you know? We also have a section on The Great War. and a
Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.
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Want to know more about RAF Wigtown? There are:3 items tagged RAF Wigtown available in our Library
These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War. |
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Pat "Paddy" Leonard     Paddy Leonard, AC2, WAAF, as everyone knew her at RAF Biggin Hill during the Battle of Britain, was a member of the "Glamour Watch." A plotter working in the Ops Building as part of a skeleton crew, she had volunteered for the work duty the day that a 500-lb bomb came through the roof, bounced off a safe and blew up in the back room where it was redirected. Somewhat protected by the heavy plotting table under which she dove, she was not injured by the flying glass, metal and wood shards that resulted from the explosion. With the crackling of a fire heard behind them, the staff in the Ops Building quickly exited the room through the blown out windows. Because of the events of that day, two non-commissioned officers in the building later received the Military Medal. As tradition has it it was most likely also presented to them on behalf of the crew on watch that day.
Paddy Leonard spent a year at RAF Biggin Hill through the period that made the station famous. Part of that time was spent in the old vacated butcher's shop in the Pantiles, which was a temporary new home to the Ops Room plotters until other more permanent facilities could be arranged. Picked up by lorry, the WAAF personel were transported daily to and from the shop which they entered from the rear to avoid any attention to their presence there.
As the need for WAAF officers grew with the ever expanding war, the early veterans of RAF Biggin Hill rose to fill those rolls. Personally selecteed by Assistant Section Officer Felicity Hanbury who would eventually become the head of the WAAF during WWII, Paddy Leonard's next claim to fame was becoming the first WAAF officer, (in fact, the first WAAF) and cipher officer at RAF Wigtown in Scotland, No.1 Air Observer School. Within 2-1/2 years Paddy Leonard grew from an art student at the Croydon School of Art to the rank of Section Officer in the WAAF, senior officer to a 250-WAAF contingent at RAF Wigtown. She also logged 60 hours of flying time as a passenger of various aircraft arriving at of flying out of the station, a requirement of all officers according to her CO so they would know what the flyers had to endure, even though it was against regulations for WAAF to fly early in the war. When she resigned her commission she was only 22 but a seasoned veteran of WWII. Married to a Canadian pilot in the RAF in 1942 she left the WAAF in November 1942 after more than 2-1/2 years of service as she was expecting the first of her four children. Two were born in Harrogate England during the war where she went to join her husband after he was reposted and two others were born in Montreal, Canada after the war.
Paddy Leonard, or Pat Carswell, as eveyone came to know her after her marriage, lived on the Island of Montreal from 1945 to 1974 when her husband took early retirement from his corporate executive job and they moved to the Rideau Lakes area about 25 miles north of Kingston, Ontario. In more than 30 years of retirement she and her husband enjoyed living by the lake, numerous trips, camping, international travel, visiting Scotland and England and touring Europe with their daughter and son-in-law who had settled in the Netherlands where he grew up.
Born in London on February 23rd, 1920 within the sound of Beau Bells, she was the granddaughter of a Irish blood but English-born London Dock Worker who she never knew and a Swedish-Finnish carpenter who learned his trade at sea. They both married English girls in London. As a switch from her ancestral background she was the daughter of a James Leonard who rose to become a member of the London Stock Exchange. She came from a very unusual background. But like her father who had served in WWI she felt it was her duty to serve in WWII. She believed that had her father had any sons, they would have done the same as did a number of her second cousins who were pilots in the RAF. She lived a happy life dying peacefully at the age of 85 on September 12th, 2005 in her home by the lake less than a month after returning from an Alaskan Cruise. She live life to the fullest and enjoyed every minute of it. May she rest in peace.
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F/Lt. John Francis Banks 192 Squadron John Banks qualified as an air bomber on 19th of June 1943.
He studied Navigation and map reading in Anson planes at AFU Wigtown to 6th of January 1944, the transferred to No 84 OTU at Harrington where he was flying Wellington bombers with pilot F/O Clarkson.
No 84 OTU moved to Desborough on 3rd of March 1944
John and his crewmates joined 192 Squadron at Foulsham on the 7th of April 1944, they flew sorties to Bay of Biscay Channel, the Western Approaches, over the North Sea, Dutch coast, French coast and the Frisians in a Wellington Bomber.
He completed one operational tour of 40 sorties.
John transferred to 221 Group on the 1st of June 1945 flying Dakotas from Rangoon over Burma.
In October he joined 47 Squadron flying Mosquitos as a navigator and was demobbed in 1946.
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