Flight Lt AC Heath
Alick Charles Heath
- Rank
- Flight Lt
- Squadron
- No 254 Squadron
- Fate
- Killed in action, 9 May 1940
From the book
The Dreaded Telegram
Buckinghamshire and Cape Town are 10 000 km apart, but Eli Heath and his wife Emily were numbed by the Air Ministry telegram delivered to their Bellville home on May 11th advising their son Flight Lt AC Heath a No 254 Squadron Coastal Command Blenheim pilot, was “Missing as a result of Operations against the Enemy”. Alick Charles Heath commissioned as an “acting Pilot Officer on probation” in 1935 and had flown several operational sorties by May 9th, 1940, when his Blenheim, hit by flak, crashed in Bergen Harbour while escorting Fleet Air Arm Skuas attacking shipping. The first Coastal Command Blenheim operational sortie loss left no survivors,
The Dreaded Telegram
On July 25th, eleven weeks after AC Heath was killed, 21 -year -old Flying Officer Hugh Haswell who had been with the squadron since late June, and his crew were shot down while searching for survivors from “SS Weknes”. The Bristol Blenheim’s operational vulnerability, illustrated by 113 aircrew and 47 aircraft being lost to enemy fire during those 11 weeks. Haswell’s parents Hugh and Ann received a telegram at their Johannesburg home on July 27th advising he was “Missing as a result of Operations against the Enemy”, unaware of that statistic
The Dreaded Telegram
Educated at Parktown Boys High in Johannesburg, Pilot Officer Sidney Gibson Nicoll and his No 500 Squadron Coastal Command Blenheim crew failed to return from a sortie on September 24th. Coastal Command had by then lost around 230 Blenheim’s and 441 aircrew in 16 months since the loss of Alec Heath and his crew.