Three: Sergeant W. J. C. Corker, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; War Medal 1939-45, in their orginal addressed card forwarding box, with Air Ministry condolence and transmittal slips, the former in the name of ‘Sergeant W. J. C. Corker’, extremely fine (3) £350-400

William John Cheshire Corker, a native of Birkenhead, commenced his training in November 1939 and qualified as an Air Observer in April 1940. Converting to Blenheims at No. 18 O.T.U. in the following month, he was posted to No. 101 Squadron at Oakington in Cambridgeshire and completed his first operational sortie on 7 July. Three more followed that August, but on the night of 26th-27th, his Blenheim collided with a barrage balloon cable near Eastleigh, Southampton on returning from a mission to St. Malo, and crashed into a field near “Oaklands” in Allington Lane - all three crew members perished. Police Constable Molloy of the Southampton Constabulary was first on the scene, where a Mr. Brenton from nearby “Game Keeper’s Cottage” reported that a piece of wreckage had smashed through his sister’s bedroom window and embedded itself in the wall on the opposite side of the room: a subsequent investigation confimed that a Whitley bomber had met a similar fate just two weeks earlier.

Sold with the recipient’s original Observer’s and Navigator’s Flying Log Book, with entries covering the period November 1939 to August 1940, and closing ink endorsement, ‘Killed in Action 26.8.40’, and related Air Ministry forwarding letter; four wartime portrait photographs, in uniform or in flying kit; a certified copy of his Death Certificate, dated 10 September 1940; and an old handwritten copy of the recipient’s “last letter” to his parents, only to be opened in the event of his death (originally dated 4 November 1939):

‘I am writing now and all the time I write I am hoping you never have reason to read it. However when you read this letter I shall have gone and all I ask for myself is that I shall have died honourably and that grand old flag, the Union Jack, will be flying as proudly as ever. If I have helped to keep her flying I shall not have failed and above all I shall not have failed you. In that there is comfort for us all. Please forgive me if I appear too sentimental but you see I love you all so very much ... ’