Portsmouth War Dead project

Both listed in 'Flight' 8 August 1940 as Killed On Active Service.....

Killed in aircraft collision North England.

Oxford I - L4618 - 5 FTS - collided mid air over Shotton Steelworks with Master N7432 of same unit.

Caualties L4618:
Brothers Sgts Eric E.H. OSGOOD - 758217 and Ronald A. OSGOOD - 742599.


[FONT=&quot](Killed on active service' means that the individual died as a result of an accident or something similar whilst engaged on operational duties. Thus, if a person was killed on a training sortie, or a flight not engaged in operations against the enemy that would be classed as KOAS)[/FONT]

Many thanks for that Peter. Icredible to find another set of brothers killed in the same incident. Ironic too that the Oxford was designed and built in Portsmouth by Airspeed.

 

Well I haven't posted for a while, mainly as I haven't found any new stories to tell and my time has been spent both 'cleaning up' the database, starting to write up some stories and starting work on a similar WW1 database.

I have been discussing my project with the curator of the D-Day Museum and he has asked if I would like to write up the stories I have researched and for them to go on display in the D-Day Museum, in a folder for visitors to browse. Apparently there photos in the D-Day Museum collection of Private Bobby Johns, Sergeant Sidney Cornell DCM and others that could go with their write-ups.

 

Major Maurice Budd MC
Royal Sussex Regiment
Died 23 November 1945
Age 28, from Copnor, Portsmouth
Gauhati War Cemetery, India

Captain Maurice Budd, from Copnor and an officer of the Royal Sussex Regiment, was serving on attachment with V Force in Burma in 1945. The citation for his Military Cross picks up the story:

During the period under review [16 February to 15 May 1945] Capt. M.A.J. Budd operating continuously with clandestine small patrols behind in the RAMREE & TAUNGUP – SANDOWAY areas has provided a constant flow of valuable information regarding enemy concentrations and movement. On one occasion knowing that the enemy were aware of his presence behind their lines and were hunting him, he remained and completed his task and then succeeded in withdrawing his patrol without loss. Throughout Capt. Budd has performed his duties with unfaltering steadfastness and without personal regard, displaying a standard of courage and devotion to duty of a high order. I strongly reccomend him for the award of the Military Cross.

 

BQMS Stanley Thayer MM
Age 31, from Cosham, Portsmouth
Died 8 October 1944
Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery, France

Lance Bombardier Stanley Thayer, 27 and from Cosham, was serving with 5th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery of the Royal Artillery. 5 HAA Battery were part of 2 Heavy AA Regiment, and were based in Northern France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. They landed in France in November 1939.

As a 27 year old Lance-Bombardier in a regular Artillery unit in 1940, Thayer was almost certainly a pre-war regular soldier. During the German invasion of France and Belgium in the Spring of 1940, Lance Bombardier Thayer found himself facing an attack by German aircraft.

At 6am on Sunday May 11th, eleven Dornier 215 aircraft flew at a height of about 50 feet very near to the gun position at which the L/Bdr was stationed. The aircraft appeared to be about to attack the gun site since they were flying in line astern formation in the direction of the site. Although a burst of machine gun fire came from one of the planes, and he was standing quite unprotected by any form of emplacement, L/Bdr Thayer opened fire with his Bren Gun. The approach of the aircraft was turned away from the site, five planes flying to one side and six to the other. He engaged each plane as it appeared and one plane appeared to be hit a large number of times.

By his exemplary conduct and coolness in action, L/Bdr Thayer set a very fine example to the remainder of the section and saved the gun site.

Thayer’s Military Medal was announced in the London Gazette on 20 December 1940.

Thayer served on throughout the war, and at some point he was also mentioned in dispatches. In 1944 he was a Battery Quartermaster Sergeant with the 80th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Brigade. 80th HAA Brigade came directly under the command of 21st Army Group in the invasion of Europe.

BQMS Thayer died on 8 October 1944, at the age of 31, and is buried in Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery in France. He may have died of illness in hospital as Dieppe was some way behind the front line, or his anti-aircraft unit may have been stationed there.

 

Hi James,
I have a book which shows where all the bombs fell in Portsmouth during the war. But I am unable to find it. I brought it in the hope of finding info on a realtion of mine who was killed.
Her name was "Lilian Lotte Johnson" and was killed by a bomb blast at 1 a.m. on the 15 July 1944. Her body was found in Newcomen Road, Stamshaw, Portsmouth and she was taken to the mortuary in Edgeware Road, Portsmouth at 3.23 a.m. She was 68 years of age and at the time lived at 94 Winstanley Road, Portsmouth. The only personal thing salvaged was her wedding ring.

I would like to know if it was a V-1 that hit her shelter..as she was in her shelter at the time so I am told. The date would fit the attacks of V-1's on Portsmouth...and from the description of the destruction..It must have been a sizable explosion.

So I am hoping if someone could tell me if the bomb which landed in the given place was a V-1. It might be in my book,,,but I have been searching for 2 hours and have yet to find it..very annoying.

Regards
Paul

 

Hi All, Me again.

Apart from the aunt who was killed by a V1 ( found an eye witness..or as close as ) as mentioned in my 1st post.
I have dicovered 3 other relation either killed or wounded during the wars.

George Henry Johnson..my grt uncle. Though born in Portsmouth, fought as a Canadian in ww1. He enlisted with the 143rd CEF in 1916 and was wounded in France 1917.
I am assuming it was a head wound as he was classed as a mental for the rest of his life. He came to an untimely end in London in 1927 when he died after drinking corrosive acid due to his mental state.

Norman Charles Mitchell.... son of the half sister of the aunt killed by the V-1. He was KIA in Sicily in 1943 and was serving with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment of the Canadian Army.

Charles James Baverstock ...son of my grt grandmother's sister(mothers side)
Birth Place: Reading, Berks
Residence: Reading
Death Date: 3 Apr 1916
Death Location: France & Flanders
Enlistment Location: Mapledurham, Berks
Rank: Private
Regiment: Royal Scots Fusiliers
Battalion: 1st Battalion
Number: 10963
Type of Casualty: Killed in action
Theatre of War: Western European Theatre

Born in England but serving with in a Scottish unit!...
Wonder how many more I find.

 

Well its been a long time, but I've finally 'finished' my Portsmouth WW2 Dead research!

(I say finished, because we all know that a project like this is never really 'finished')

2,549 men and women:

1,290 Royal Navy
675 Army
410 Royal Air Force
116 Royal Marines
42 Merchant Navy
13 NAAFI

The large number of naval casualties are no doubt down to Portsmout being the home of the Royal Navy - invariably sailors ended up settling in Portsmouth. In particular a large proportion of men were killed on the Portsmouth based Battleships HMS Royal Oak, HMS Hood and HMS Barham.

Of the Army personnel only 115 were from the Hampshire Regiment, a much smaller proprotion than during the First World War.

209 of the RAF casualties were killed serving in Bombers. By comparison 16 were killed serving with Spitfires and Hurricanes, for example.

I have found 16 women - 1 Red Cross, 5 ATS, 2 WAAF and 8 Wrens.

The years in which they were killed:

1939 - 91
1940 - 366
1941 - 530
1942 - 363
1943 - 394
1944 - 465
1945 - 145
1946/7 - 189

youngest were 16 (8: 1 underage Private, 1 Merchant Seaman and the rest Boy Seamen RN). Oldest was 73 - Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes

Plenty of awards:

Eight BEM, two CBE, one Cross of St George (Imperial Russia), one DCM, nine DFC, six DFM, five DSM (and one bar), forty DSM (two bars), three DSO, two GC, one GM, one Kings Badge (RM), seven MBE, four MC, sixty MID, six MM, four OBE, two RD, two RHS Bronze Medals, and one RVM.

Theres plenty more statistics and analysis, if anyone would like to know anything else please feel free to let me know. I can analyse casualties by age, country, cemetery/memorial, regiment, service, area of Portsmouth, practically anything.

At the moment I'm working hard on researching 10-15 of the most interesting stories - not necessarily the medal winners, but stories that have some kind of resonance or poignancy - with a view to putting together a proposal for a book. I'm also doing a similar thing with the names from Portsmouth's WW1 memorial too.

 

Well done James, that is a bloody great effort! Thanks for posting the tid bits as you went some of them proved very interesting.

 

I posted some comments on here, but they seem to have gone astray.

The big explosion was a large landmine which landed in the Crasswell Street area, with narrow streets and small family houses, behind what is now the Commercial Road precinct; nobody new the true death toll. Bombs went down and blew up, the landmine exploded on impact and blasted an area about half a mile radius

Similarly, there was a bomb dropped on a cinema in Lake Road on a Saturday afternoon; I believe it was impossible to identify the bodies.

When the Guildhall was firebombed, the glare was visible all over the city; I don't now about the death toll, but civic documents and records were destroyed. There was an enormous lot of damage in Portsmouth, but it was over a period and not just one occasion.

There was a book, I think by the Portsmouth Evening News, with a map of the bomb damaged areas. They might have a copy in their archives, or the central library or city archives.

Ednamay

 

James
Great effort congratulations now the forth rail bridge syndrome will kick in and you will always be amending owing to information gleaned and presented by people who see it.

 

Thanks for all the kind words!

Of course, when I say 'finished' I mean I've entered all the names into my database, found them all on CWGC, tracked down most of the Decorations with the London Gazette and TNA, and used Geoff's search engine to find a few who were not on the original list.

I can imagine I'll be forever adding details for years - there are still quite a few where units, ages, area etc are unknown. And then of course there is the task of trying to find grave and other photos.

 

I posted some comments on here, but they seem to have gone astray.

The big explosion was a large landmine which landed in the Crasswell Street area, with narrow streets and small family houses, behind what is now the Commercial Road precinct; nobody new the true death toll. Bombs went down and blew up, the landmine exploded on impact and blasted an area about half a mile radius

Similarly, there was a bomb dropped on a cinema in Lake Road on a Saturday afternoon; I believe it was impossible to identify the bodies.

When the Guildhall was firebombed, the glare was visible all over the city; I don't now about the death toll, but civic documents and records were destroyed. There was an enormous lot of damage in Portsmouth, but it was over a period and not just one occasion.

There was a book, I think by the Portsmouth Evening News, with a map of the bomb damaged areas. They might have a copy in their archives, or the central library or city archives.

Ednamay

Hi Edna, sorry its taken me a while to get back to you. Fortunately I work for Portsmouth City Museums and Records Service in my 'day job' and we've got a few sources about the Portsmouth Blitz - ARP reports, and so on. In terms of books, I would recommend 'Portsmouth Reborn: Destruction and Reconstruction' by John Stedman, 'Portsmouth at War' by Andrew Whitmarsh, and 'Smitten City' by the News, which I think is the book you refer to. They're reprinting it at the moment, but I know there are copies in the Library (currently closed due to serious flood damage).

James

 

Hi James,

Here is some more info on George Sullivan. Should give you some idea of what happened to him. Excuse the jpeg orientation, it won't save in the upright position.

Steve.

 

Hi James,

Here is some more info on George Sullivan. Should give you some idea of what happened to him. Excuse the jpeg orientation, it won't save in the upright position.

Steve.

Hi Steve, thanks for that, thats a great help!

James

 

Hi Steve, thanks for that, thats a great help!

James

No problem James, this is all thanks to forumites, in particular Pete Keane.

There may be more on Sullivan to come?

Steve.

 

Do you know the circumstances surrounding his death

 

I hope I'm not jinxing things here, but I'm in advanced talks with a publisher to complete and publish 'Portsmouth's Second World War Heroes' sometime towards the end of 2011.



I've got several provisional sections - Royal Navy, Army, RAF, Royal Marines, and other services (Merchant Navy, Wrens, ATS, WAAFs and Red Cross). Most of the stories I've featured here over the past year or so will feature, hopefully in a lot more depth than during my in-the-process posts!

 

Good news James, please keep us informed of your progress.

 

James, As a Portsmouth person I have much admiration for your project. For some reason I've only just come across this thread. After reading through it quickly I have two points.
1 You seem to have abandoned the idea of including civilian casualties. How come?
2 Have you an explicit definition of the scope of the database, along the lines of: 'the aim of this database is to include all - and only - those people who meet the following criteria .... ?
Apologies if these points have already been covered. As I said I read through the whole thread in one go.
Bart

 

I sometimes wonder about the ratio of deaths in the two world wars in any given place in the UK. In many towns and cities, Portsmouth for example, there is a memorial listing names for WW1, but no such WW2 memorial for comparison. Gloucester does have memorials for both wars but I was puzzled to see that the WW1 memorial there has about four times as many names as the WW2 memorial.

I’ve put together this little piece of algebra.

Let
DX1 be Military Dead of place X in WW1 (in principle the number of names on the war memorial)
DX2 be Military Dead of place X in WW2 (in principle the number of names that is or ought to be on a war memorial, if it records only military dead)
DU1 be Military Dead of UK in WW1
DU2 be Military Dead of UK in WW2

Then as a rough initial assumption:
DX2 = DX1 x (DU2/DU1)

Now it may be that the boundaries of place X have changed significantly between WW1 and WW2. If so, an adjustment is needed:

Let
PX1 be Population of place X 1914
PX2 be Population of place X 1939
PU1 be Population of UK 1914
PU2 be Population of UK 1939

Then
DX2 = DX1 x (DU2/DU1) x (PX2/PX1) x (PU1/PU2)

Here, to demonstrate the model, is the case of Portsmouth. Most of these figures could be refined, some perhaps drastically. The UK figures are from Wikipedia, and may not all be generally accepted.

DX1 Military Dead of Portsmouth in WW1: 5000 (as on the Cenotaph by the Guildhall)
DX2 Military Dead of Portsmouth in WW2: unknown
DU1 Military Dead of UK in WW1: 900,000
DU2 Military Dead of UK in WW2: 400,000
PX1 Population of Portsmouth 1914: 200,000 (ie as town, before extension of boundaries beyond Portsea Island – my guesstimate)
PX2 Population of Portsmouth 1939: 250,000 (ie as city, after extension of boundaries beyond Portsea Island)
PU1 Population of UK 1914: 43,000,000
PU2 Population of UK 1939: 48,000,000

Then, as a rough initial assumption:
Military Dead of Portsmouth in WW2 =
5000 x (400,000/900,000) x (250,000/200,000) x (43,000,000/48,000,000)
= about 2500

Doing some algebra analogous to the above for Gloucester confirms that there is indeed something odd about its war memorials. But the detail of the lists on http://www.glosgen.co.uk/gloucester/glosterwm.htm soon clarifies things. Gloucester City War Memorial for WW1 turns out to name not only the military dead of Gloucester but also all soldiers of the Gloucestershire regiment who fell, wherever in the country they lived. Thus the WW1 and WW2 memorials have different scope definitions and so the ratio of 4:1 in their name totals is not remarkable.