Military

MAEE Helensburgh was dreading the prospect of a white Christmas in 1941.

The Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment secretly moved to the Helensburgh area from Felixstowe when war broke out in 1939, with work being carried out at Rhu Hangers.

A HELENSBURGH man was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal in July 2001 after leading an heroic escape by a group of United Nations workers from war-torn Sierra Leone.

But it was at great personal cost, as Major Phil Ashby brought home a memento of the West African jungle in the form of a virus lodged in his spinal cord.

TWO Helensburgh women have received inscribed badges of honour — 60 years after their hard work in the Second World War.

Anne Coll (left) and Mary Copeland were in the Women’s Land Army and worked on farms, planting crops and tending animals to keep the nation provided with food while the men were away fighting.

LIVES were lost during the Second World War when the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment was based at Rhu Hangars.

The story of an MAEE Lerwick seaplane which crashed into the hillside above Faslane on October 21 1941 with the loss of seven lives is told elsewhere in the Military section of this website, and there was another fatal crash a year later — this time involving a Supermarine Walrus aircraft.

SEVEN lives were in lost in a World War Two tragedy shrouded in secrecy when a flying boat which had taken off from Rhu crashed into the hillside above Faslane.

The Saunders Roe S.36 Lerwick test aircraft L7248 from the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment based at Helensburgh and Rhu crashed close to the Gareloch on October 21 1941.

A HELENSBURGH man was awarded the United States Medal of Honor in 1894 for bravery in the American Civil War.

James Jardine, who had emigrated from the burgh, received the award for “gallantry in the charge of the volunteer storming party."