550 Squadron Photos

P/O C G H Kenyon and Crew

P/O Kenyon crew was:

Flight Engineer: F/Sgt Ellis

F/Sgt Ellis was from Nottingham. He joined the RAF sometime in 1943 and qualified as a flight engineer on 6 Sept 1943. He trained on Halifaxes and Lancasters in late 1943 when he teamed up with the then Sgt, later Pilot Officer, Kenyon. He, along with the rest of the P/O Kenyon crew joined 550 Sqdn in early December 1943. His first operational flight was on 20 Dec 1943 when he flew with P/O Kenyon in Lanc W2 536 to Frankfurt. Subsequently, he flew until 22 May 1944. His last operational flight was to Dortmund. He took part in the Nuremburg raid encountering flak which he described in typical RAF language as being "so thick you could lower the wheels and ride on it". Most flights were in M279 although for Nuremburg he was in LL851. He went to Brunswick in EE139 in January 1944.

After completing his operations his logbook records lots of circuits and bumps. He received jungle kit during 1945 and was expecting to go to the far East when war ended. Thereafter and before demobilisation he worked on early flight simulators at RAF Cottesmore. He left the RAF in 1947 and returned to his pre-service job in Nottingham. In 1945 he married Joan, who had served as a wireless operator in the WAAF.

After the war, in the mid-50s, he contracted polio and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He died July 1979 from a heart attack while at work. He had in fact suffered with a congenital heart defect which had not been picked up in those dark days of 1943 when young men were required for the war effort.

The link below shows a page from the Flight Engineer's log book; a mixture of training flights and live ops to Frankfurt and Berlin.

F/Sgt Ellis log book

Information courtesy of Peter Ellis (son of F/Sgt J.N Ellis)