Military

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A DECORATED war hero from Garelochhead was among the many thousands who lost their lives in the World War One Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium — and now his name is carved in stone at the Glasgow University Memorial Chapel.

Lieutenant Campbell Greenhill MC, who was born at his parents home in Glencairn Terrace on November 4 1885, was 31 when he died in what was also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, one of the major battles of the war.

HELENSBURGH paid its annual tribute to the fallen of two World Wars and other conflicts on Remembrance Sunday 2018, and this was a particularly special occasion as it was the centenary of the World War One armistice.

The service took place in front of one of the most elegant war memorials in Scotland within the superb Garden of Remembrance, all refurbished as part of the Hermitage Park improvement project.

NOT everything stopped when the guns fell silent at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.