Douglas Wilson was commanding officer 102 Squadron 14 July 1944 to 14 Jan 1945. He was also an early PDU spitfire pilot in 212 Squadron. He was also a test pilot at Farnborough during the War
Obituary as printed in the Daily Telegraph, 30th June 2004:
Wing Commander Douglas Wilson, who has died aged 87, won a DSO, a DFC and an AFC as a photographic reconnaissance Spitfire pilot, test pilot and bomber squadron commander during the Second World War.
Wilson was one of the small group of pilots at the RAF's Photographic Development Unit (PDU), an unconventional body formed to take photographs of Germany and surrounding countries during the so-called Phoney War. The aircraft used included a small number of specially equipped Spitfires capable of flying at very high level.
In April 1940 Wilson was appointed to command a small flight which provided the British Expeditionary Force with photographs of German Army movements. Following the German thrust through Belgium on May 10, the Spitfires operated at maximum effort until after the evacuation from Dunkirk. Retreating to Poitiers, and finally to an airfield near La Rochelle, Wilson and his handful of pilots flew until mid-June photographing the German advance across the river Seine.
With the Germans poised to capture their airfield, the Spitfires left for England, leaving all the unit's ground equipment and vehicles to be destroyed. Wilson commandeered an abandoned Fairey Battle bomber and supervised repairs to the wing using a piece of a tree trunk and some fabric before cramming six airmen in the back of the three-seat aircraft and taking off for Heston, where they arrived after a four-hour flight.
Stationed at Wick in Scotland, Wilson flew long-range photographic reconnaissance sorties for which the squadron's single-engine aircraft were stripped of their guns and armour plating, allowing them to fly above 30,000 ft. With extra fuel tanks, Wilson and his pilots flew five-hour sorties to the Baltic and Norway in their unheated cockpits and without navigation aids to bring back valuable photographs of the activities of the German Navy. For this crucial and dangerous work, he was awarded the DFC and mentioned in dispatches.
Louis Douglas Wilson was born on March 31 1917 at Vigo, Spain, where his father was the head of station of Eastern Telegraph. With his father re-assigned every few years, Wilson was educated in Lisbon and Alexandria before returning to England, by which time he was fluent in Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese.
He was then sent to King's School, Bruton, and the RAF College at Cranwell, where he was awarded the Groves Memorial Prize for the best pilot in his entry. In January 1937 Wilson joined No 40 squadron flying the Hind and later Battle and Blenheim bombers. The day before war broke out, Wilson flew one of 16 Battles to an airfield near Rheims as part of the Advance Air Striking Force. Six days later, he led six aircraft on the squadron's first war sortie, a reconnaissance of the Metz area. There was little activity over the coming weeks, and the squadron was withdrawn to England to re-equip with the Blenheim, but Wilson soon found himself appointed to the PDU.
In January 1941 Wilson was loaned for six months to Vickers Armstrong as a test pilot. During two years at Farnborough he flew more than 100 different types of aircraft, including Britain's first jet, the Gloster E28/39, as well as captured Luftwaffe aircraft.
Some of Wilson's work was extremely hazardous. In 1942 the scientists at Farnborough were conducting experiments to invent a system which would allow low-flying bombers to cut the wires of barrage balloons. To obtain data, Wilson had to make a series of flights in a specially modified Hurricane, a task which involved flying the aircraft into the wires of tethered balloons. On one occasion the wire jammed his controls, and he had great difficulty extracting the aircraft from a spin. He recovered at 1,000 ft, and landed with a length of wire trailing behind his aircraft.
On November 30 1942, he took off from Exeter airfield in his Hurricane for a further test. As a special precaution, his cockpit was reinforced to reduce the risk of decapitation, but the heavy structure gave him a very limited view. He did not see two German fighters, which were on a tip-and-run raid over Devon. Their Cannon shells thudded into the Hurricane, severely damaging the aircraft's controls. Wilson tried to bale out, but could not open the heavy canopy; after several attempts he managed to land, then discovered that most of the rear of the aircraft had been shot away.
Early models of the four-engine Halifax bomber suffered control problems resulting in many accidents with heavy loss of life. A test crew from Farnborough endeavouring to identify the problem were killed when the aircraft crashed out of control. Immediately afterwards, Wilson took an engineer on a test flight for a further attempt to obtain data. As the heavy bomber entered a turn, it rolled violently and entered a vertical dive. With great difficulty, Wilson managed to regain control before landing the aircraft safely. A major modification to the aircraft's two fins eventually solved the problem. Wilson was awarded the AFC.
After spending six months briefing pilots in the United States on RAF flight testing methods, Wilson was given command of No 102 squadron equipped with modified Halifax bombers, and led his squadron on many raids over Germany.
On four separate occasions his aircraft was damaged by anti-aircraft fire. While leading a raid to Scholven in October 1944 his aircraft was badly damaged as he started his bombing run. Despite this, he continued to fly straight and level over the target until the bombs had been dropped. The citation for his DSO described him as "a squadron commander of outstanding quality, possessing a high order of courage and devotion to duty".
Wilson was deeply affected by the loss of his young crews. He insisted on writing personal letters to the next of kin of all the aircrew posted missing, often remaining at his desk for hours after he had returned from an operation.
After the war, he had appointments in Iraq and the Far East, and commanded Nos 9 and 49 squadrons when they were converting from the Lancaster to the Lincoln bomber. After a series of appointments at the Air Ministry, Wilson served in Germany before flying fighters as the chief instructor at the Central Gunnery School and taking a two-year appointment on the operations staff of the Second Allied Tactical Air Force in Germany. He retired in 1959, when he joined the export department of the aero-engine division of Rolls-Royce. He finally retired to Hampshire in 1973.
Douglas Wilson, who died on June 6, married Valerie Roche in 1940. The marriage was dissolved in 1953, and in the same year he married Eileen Farrell. He is survived by his second wife and by twin daughters and a son from his first marriage.
