Military

HAND-WRITTEN notes and sketches by Lieutenant Commander Leo Lane RNVR discovered in 2019 have confirmed RAF Helensburgh’s role in organising the Barnes Wallis Highball bouncing bomb trials on Loch Striven.

These trials took place in September and October 1944, but at the end of World War Two RAF Helensburgh went into mothballs.

A FIRST World War battleship which played an important role in the secret operations of RAF Helensburgh during World War Two was a key ship used in the D-Day landings 75 years ago during June 1944.

At the start of World War Two, Courbet, a former French battleship, was taken over by the British to stop the warship being taken over by the Germans and  used against the Allies.

BOTH Helensburgh Baptist Church and the Helensburgh Cenotaph in Hermitage Park agree that Staff Sergeant Pirret, a recipient of the Military Medal, died in France in 1917.

But strangely they disagree about his Christian name. In Baptist and other accounts he is named as Norman McLeod Pirret, but on the Park monument he is Edward Pirret.

THE CENTENARY in 2018 of the end of the First World War resulted in a lot of fascinating research on Helensburgh and district people who lost their lives in the conflict.

The stories of many — from the only woman named on the WW1 panel on the Hermitage Park Cenotaph to the chaplain who lost his life when a hospital ship was torpedoed – can be seen on this Helensburgh Heritage Trust website.

DATELINE: RAF Invergordon, Scotland, May 2 and 3, 1940 . . .

Lieutenant Haakon Offerdal arrives in Norwegian Heinkel 115. Flying boat Cabot arrives from Helensburgh.

THURSDAY JUNE 6 2019 was the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy which were to change the course of World War Two.

It was marked in Helensburgh that night when the Victoria Hall hosted an anniversary concert organised by Helensburgh Rotary Club and featuring the HMS Neptune Volunteer Band and the local Military Wives Choir.

A NAVAL officer from Helensburgh led a United Kingdom team which helped rescue seven Russian sailors from a trapped submarine — actions which resulted in thanks from president Vladimir Putin.

The leader of the team was Commander Ian Riches, who lived in Victoria Road and since retiring from the navy has made his home in Perthshire.

THE Golden Hind on the Gareloch must have been an impressive sight — not Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind of 1580, or a replica, but a flying boat of the same name.

This was in 1940, and it could fly with a wing span of 134 ft compared to the 19 ft width of the galleon.

THE GARELOCH was the starting point for one of the most important top-secret missions of World War Two.

WINTER frosts caused problems at RAF Helensburgh during World War Two — resulting in difficulties when handling, servicing and launching flying boats.

This meant that test flights were often postponed or delayed, and schedules were missed.

WHEN Hogmanay 1942 was celebrated at RAF Helensburgh, pilots of the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment were about to start the New Year testing Johnnie Walker . . .

However it was not the whisky, but a potential lethal cocktail made up of the explosives Torpex, RDX and TNT packed into a 400-500 lb self-roaming bomb powered by an attached bottle of compressed hydrogen.

THE GREAT grandson of the founder of Teachers Whisky, a young Army officer from Cove, was killed in action in the Flanders trenches on May 14 1916.

Second Lieutenant William George Teacher, who was 22, lost his life while in command of his company at Thiepval, a few weeks before the start of the Somme campaign.