Squadron Leader WS Bowyer

Against Unfavourable Odds

Twenty-six-year-old Flying Officer WS Bowyer, born in Durban and educated at DHS commissioned in 1937, flew a single No 257 Squadron “Battle of Britain” sortie in mid- July but ill health resulted in a posting to an Anti- Aircraft Co-Operation Unit. Squadron Leader Walter Stafford Bowyer was killed in 1942 when his Gladiator collided with a Barrage Balloon 4.

Against Unfavourable Odds

Pilot Officer John Alison George Chomley had interesting South African connections. His Australian born father served with the Victorian Mounted Rifles during the Boer War and was living in Durban when he married Anne Kime Mansfield in 1913. JAG Chomley, born in Rhodesia in 1920 and Michaelhouse educated, entered RAF Cranwell College as an eighteen-year-old Dominion nomination in early 1939 but College graduations were impossible when war broke out. Chomley joined the RAFVR, commissioned in June 1940 and just 20 when he joined No 257 Squadron at RAF Northolt in July where Flight Lt WS Bowyer was a flight commander. Pilot Officer Chomley lost his life on August 12th when he was shot down off Portsmouth.

Against Unfavourable Odds

Geoffery David Leybourne Haysom, Durban born and DHS educated where he was a few years behind Edwin Swales and WS Bowyer, commissioned in 1937 at the age of 20 and flew Hurricanes in France. Haysom served with No 79 Squadron during the “Battle of Britain”, accounted for two enemy aircraft in August, crash landed after combat on September 1st but back flying two days later. A page from his RAF “Pilots Flying Logbook” offers some insight as to what young airmen endured at the time.

Spirits in the Sky

The powerful larger than life 2 700 m tall bronze sculptures were not thought of when Chaz Bowyer’s “Bomber Barons” was published in 1983 but a paragraph in the opening chapter speaks volumes for those silent sculptures and encapsulates the intolerable strain aircrews with an average age of twenty-two endured during an operational sortie, “The return flight was no less anxious – three, four or five hours of watching instruments for the first sign of any faltering in engines or controls. Too often the aircraft bore flak and/or cannon shell damage- shattered tails, riddled fuselages, hydraulic lines to flaps, elevators, undercarriages ruptured, or one engine feathered and trailing a steady line of oil. One or more crew men could have suffered wounds during fighter attacks, some may be lying on the fuselage floor, having made their last flight. Every mile of the trip would bring further hazards from flak or fighters, while unforecast weather conditions might add complications to an already fraught situation” 8.