550 Squadron Photos

F/Lt J P Morris and Crew

The F/Lt Morris crew was posted to 550 Squadron from No. 11 Base on 20 October 1944:

The picture below taken on 8 Nov 1944 is of F/Lt Morris and crew.

Click image F/Lt Morris and crew
L-to-R: F/Lt Morris (P), F/O Leonard, Sgt Bailey, Sgt Furber, F/Sgt Byrne, Sgt Dennis, Sgt Hooper

F/Lt Morris and crew fly, with F/Lt Shaw as first pilot/captain, in ED905/BQ-F "Fox", "Press On Regardless", on 2 November 1944 to Düsseldorf; this was notable because this was the 100th operation for BQ-F "Fox", and there is an excellent picture of the crew under "Press On Regardless" showing the 99 bombs tally on the the cockpit on the F/Lt DA Shaw web-page.

F/Lt Morris and crew were killed on 6/7 Dec 1944 when NG251 was lost on a raid to Merseburg (near Leipzig) to attack the Leuna chemical works. P/O Byrne, in the Morris crew that transferred in (and in the photograph) did not go with his crew on the occasion of the loss of NG251 he being at base for interview with the Base Commander for his commission. P/O Byrne was killed on 13th February 1945 with the F/O Allen crew. Thus the list of the crew lost on that operation is as above except with Sgt Byrne (W/Op) being replaced by:

Other information about the flight and the target available here.

The entry on the 550 Squadron Roll of Honour is available here.

P/O John Riley Byrne

The IWM has in its collection a diary belonging to Pilot Officer Byrne (IWM Documents.12886).

The public page at https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030012739 shows an image of his entry for Thursday 2 November 1944 in which he records that this is his first operation, that the target is Dusseldorf, that the aircraft he flew in was ED905/BQ-F "Fox", "Press on Regardless" as part of the F/Lt J P Morris crew (see F/Lt J P Morris crew) and that the captain was F/Lt "Jock" Shaw.