Helensburgh Heritage
Helensburgh Heritage Trust
A CHAPLAIN who was born in Helensburgh is thought to have drowned when the hospital ship Glenart Castle was torpedoed in the Bristol Channel on February 26 1918.
Captain the Rev John B.McIlvaine, who was 39, was the Roman Catholic chaplain on the ship, and his Church of England colleague also died.
A GARELOCHSIDE man who made made the supreme sacrifice in World War One won the same gallantry medal twice.
Sergeant Norman Connor was born in Garelochhead on June 7 1896, and killed in action on September 4 1917.
ONE of the most distinguished pilots of his generation was posted to RAF Helensburgh — the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment — in February 1943.
After winning the celebrated 1927 International Schneider Trophy seaplane air race for Britain in a Supermarine floatplane, Flight Lieutenant Sydney Norman Webster’s career in the Royal Air Force really took off.
TODAY Rhu is home to the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club and a modern marina capable of accommodating up to 140 leisure craft . . .
But the same location during World War Two moored boats of a different type — flying boats, RAF high speed launches, pinnaces and seaplane tenders.
WHEN boffins looked to the stars from the banks of the Gareloch at Rhu during World War Two, were they envisaging that one day they would be pioneering rocket and supersonic air travel?
Experts including Harry Garner, John Allen, James Hamilton, Ronald Andrew Shaw and Robert Hugh Francis all served at RAF Helensburgh, the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment in and around Rhu — and all went on to even greater things.
A STEWARDESS from Helensburgh is one of two women named on the Helensburgh War Memorial in Hermitage Park.
Janet Todd of the Merchant Navy lost her life on March 25 1941 in one of the more controversial sinkings of World War Two.
A FASCINATING first-hand account of life at the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment on Garelochside in World War Two was written by someone who served there.
It was obtained by retired Merseyside newspaper editor Robin Bird, who has written two books about the establishment, officially known as RAF Helensburgh although most of its activities were in Rhu.