Auction Catalogue
Three: Sergeant E. Birchall, Royal Air Force, who was killed in action while serving as Wireless Operator / Air Gunner in No. 44 Squadron during a strike against Berlin in December 1943
1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; War Medal 1939-45, together with an original Air Ministry letter addressed to the recipient’s widow, ‘Mrs. B. Birchall, 5 Marigold Street, Pemberton, Wigan, Lancashire’, dated 27 October 1947, and card forwarding box addressed to her as ‘Mrs. B. Jenkinson’ at another Wigan address after she re-married, extremely fine (3) £250-300
This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals to the R.F.C. and R.A.F. from the Collection Formed by the Late Squadron Leader David Haller.
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Eric Birchall was born at Lamberhead Green, Orrell, near Wigan, in August 1923, the son of Thomas and Edith Birchall. Enlisting in the Royal Air Force around 1941, he qualified as a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner and was posted to No. 44 Squadron, a Lancaster unit operating out of R.A.F. Waddington, in August 1943.
He subsequently completed a dozen operational sorties, including two trips to Berlin, in addition to strikes on Bochum, Dusseldorf, Hannover, Nuremberg and Stuttgart, and it was on a third sortie to the “Big City” - on the night of 24-25 December 1943 - that his Lancaster was attacked and set alight by a night fighter, crashing 30 miles north-east of Limburg. There were no survivors, the crew today resting side by side in Hannover War Cemetery; sold with a file of research.
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