Wings Over Wick
1939 - 1945
Others

Ron Whyte, Margate, Kent
On my return from Dunkirk in May 1940, I was eventually posted to the Ayrshire Yeomanry who were then stationed at Dreghorn Camp, Edinburgh.  I should have mentioned that I was an M/T fitter in the R.A.O.C. and was attached to the Ayrshire Yeomanry.   Just after Xmas 1940 the unit was posted to Wick, our camp was just off Wick aerodrome, at that time it was occupied by the RAF of Coastal Command and flying Lockheed Hudsons and (I think) Bristol Beaufighters.   From our campsite, we often watched the planes returning from operations over Norway. On a bitterly cold day, snowing and blowing in January or early February 1941 a Hudson was returning from an operation and obviously in trouble, on landing it crashed and I understand there were no survivors. I was told that on board was Air Vice Marshall Charles Dempster Breeze.  He had gone on the flight purely as an observer.

After the war, in fact it was about 1970, my wife and I toured Northern Scotland (we visited Wick) and stayed at the John O'Groats Hotel.  On reading the Visitors Book, I looked up the entries for 1941 and low and behold, there was a name - Wing Commander C D Breeze, quite a coincidence.