The Roy Bartlett Collection of Awards to the R.N.A.S., R.F.C. and R.A.F.

Pair: Lieutenant W. A. Roberts, Royal Air Force

British War and Victory Medals (Lieut., R.A.F.), in card box of issue, together with related Memorial Plaque (William Alexander Roberts), extremely fine (3) £250-300

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Roy Bartlett Collection of Awards to the R.N.A.S., R.F.C. and R.A.F..

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William Alexander Roberts, who was born in Monmouthshire in September 1898 and enlisted in the Army in March 1917, made a successful application for pilot training in the Royal Flying Corps in June of the same year, while serving as a Lance-Corporal in a Training Battalion in Staffordshire. Appointed a 2nd Lieutenant that November, he served in assorted home defence units in 1918, including No. 44 Squadron based at Hainault Farm, Essex, and in No. 152 Squadron out in France from October 1918 to February 1919. Sadly, however, he was killed in a flying accident at R.A.F. Cranwell on 31 July 1919, when his Bristol Fighter banked and side-slipped at 200 feet, and crashed in to the ground, where it burst into flames - ‘the machine was a complete wreck and the death of the two occupants must have been instantaneous’. Roberts was buried in Shirebrook Cemetery, Derbyshire.