Helensburgh Heritage
Helensburgh Heritage Trust
THURSDAY MAY 17 2018 was the 75th anniversary of a major event in World War Two which had very significant Helensburgh connections.
Cinemas throughout the UK showed the epic and moving 1955 film “The Dam Busters”, starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd, which recreated the true story of Operation Chastise when in 1943 the RAF’s 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams in Nazi Germany with Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb
SOME of the best-known figures in Helensburgh history shared something else apart from living locally.
The Rev. John Baird, father of John Logie Baird, John Honeyman, the architect, Dr Fordyce Messer of ‘disappearing coachman’ fame, and the Anderson family of Helensburgh benefactors all belonged to the same organisation.
A CARDROSS soldier who later moved to Helensburgh had an astonishing military career before, during and after the First World War.
Angus McPherson, who was born in the village on December 10 1890, went on to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the Military Cross, and the Distinguished Service Order before leaving the Army on January 27 1921.
JUST over 80 years ago, what is probably Britain’s best known flying boat, the Shorts Sunderland, made its maiden flight — and the seaplane was to play an important part in the Helensburgh and Dumbarton areas.
The prototype aircraft K 4774 gave the name Sunderland to the new specification R22/36 aircraft.
CARDROSS has the unusual — and possibly unique for a village — distinction of having been home to two winners of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry.
The better known of the two was Lieutenant John Reginald Noble Graham, who lived with his parents at Darleith in the village before and after World War One.
A POPPY Cross was not placed at the war memorial on Rhu village green on Remembrance Sunday 2017 — but it was not far away.
The cross, in memory of those who were killed serving with RAF Helensburgh during World War Two, was placed at the nmemorial in Kidston Park, erected in the summer, overlooking its former Rhu Hangers base.
MEMORIES of the night Cardross was bombed when she was ten years-old are still fresh for a villager who now lives in America.
Patricia Lockhart, now Mrs McInnis, left Scotland for Canada in 1956, and has lived in San Diego, California, since 1960.