Remembering Reginald John Ward Hall

Who is remembering Reginald John Ward Hall?

Allied Airmen Buried in Denmark

More on Reginald Hall…

Name: Reginald John Ward Hall
Birth Date: 10 December 1916
Birth Place: London, England
Residence Place: New Toronto, Ontario
Death Date: 21 March 1945
Service Number: C14919
Force: Air
Regiment: Royal Canadian Air Force
Rank: Flying Officer
Next of Kin: Hazel Lenora Hall
Relationship: Wife

 

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=%2015146590

Additional Information:-

Son of John T. and Olive M. Hall of Long Branch, Ontario, Canada.

Flying Officer Hall was the navigator in the lead Mosquito #SZ 977 aircraft flown by RAF Wing Commander Peter Andrew KLEBOE DSO, DFC, AFC, the Commanding Officer of #21 Squadron.
This aircraft struck the flag pole on the Karlesburg Brewery in Copenhagen, blew up and crashed into the garage next to the target which was the headquarters for the Gestapo located in a convent school. Both airmen perished in the crash. The other five Mosquito aircraft with him successfully bombed the target. The second wave arrived a few seconds later and, seeing the smoke caused by Kleboe’s aircraft, bombed the school killing 123 pupils and teachers.
The Gestapo Headquarters was destroyed with heavy casualties including 7 patriots; 18 other patriots escaped. Four of the attacking aircraft were shot down by flak from the German cruiser ‘Nurnberg’ and from shore batteries.

Flying Officer Reginald John Ward Hall is commemorated on Page 521 of Canada’s Second World War Book of Remembrance.

July 25, 1944 V2

July 25, 1944 V2

Great story!

Today in History

V-1_cutaway V! “Doodlebug”

In the early years of WWII, Nazi Germany fired 10,000 V1″Doodlebug” rockets at England, killing over 6,000 Londoners by 1943. The subsonic V1 was an effective terror weapon, but the “low and slow” trajectory and short range of the weapon lacked the strategic power to end the war in the Nazi’s favor.

The V2 was different.  It was the dawn of the ballistic missile era, and Nazi Germany was first off the starting line.

The Peenemünde Aggregat A4 V2 was an early predecessor of the Cruise Missile, delivering a 2,148-pound payload over a 236 mile range at 5 times the speed of sound. You could hear the V1 “Buzz Bomb” coming and seek shelter.  Not so the V2.  Victims of the V2 didn’t know they were under attack until the weapon had exploded.

When Wernher von Braun showed Adolf Hitler color film of the launch of a V2…

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Attack the Tirpitz!! In a Halifax??

Very interesting.

John Knifton

You are so lucky! You are going to see three photographs of a relatively rare aircraft, a Halifax Mark II, taken in the almost funereal gloom of the RAF Museum at Hendon. I apologise for the quality but in their efforts to preserve the original paint on the aircraft, the museum lights are kept very low indeed. For this particular aircraft, do not be put off by the fact that it seems apparently to have grown two enormous circular fins in the middle of its back. That is an Indian Air Force B-24 Liberator:

this one

The Halifax was the second British four-engined bomber to enter service in World War Two but it became the first to bomb Germany during a raid on Hamburg on the night of March 12th-13th 1941. Subsequent increasing losses on operations over Germany caused Halifax bombers to be used on less hazardous targets from September 1943.

The Halifax…

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The Duty to Remember

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/memorial-germany-lancaster-goose-squadron-1.4195080

Excerpt

Audrey Somers has done her best over the last 73 years to put the death of her 23-year-old brother Harold behind her, but it’s caught up with her yet again.

At 87, she vividly recalls the moment the telegram arrived at her family’s Hamilton, Ont., home, informing her parents the brother she describes as “loving but quiet” was missing in action over Germany.

“I was upstairs in my bedroom, and my mother came running up and told me. She kneeled at the side of the bed and said the Lord’s Prayer.”

“The next day my father’s hair turned grey.”