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My mother told me how, during the Battle of Britain, in the summer of 1940, when the skies seemed to be permanently clear and blue, she and the other women in her road in Bexleyheath, Kent, often used to stand on their back steps and watch the 鈥渄og fights鈥� going on overhead between the Hurricanes and Spitfires of the RAF and the Luftwaffe fighters.
The women would jeer at the enemy and cheer our lads on enthusiastically, especially when they shot down one of the German planes.
Mum had a good reason for cheering when one of the Luftwaffe was shot down, apart from the obvious one of not wanting to be invaded by the Nazis. Her brother Fred Young, an RAF Sgt. Pilot, was killed on 12 July 1940, the day before her twenty-ninth birthday. She and her sister often talked about him to me.
Fred, who was born in February 1914, had joined the RAF in April 1934.
He was six feet four inches tall, well built, dark, and extremely good-looking, with a moustache. He enjoyed heavy weight boxing, rugby and putting the shot, and he was artistic. He was always sketching, usually caricatures.
After he left school he worked for his father for a year, as a book keeper. He鈥檇 always longed to be a pilot, but joined as an AC2 clerk. In 1938 he finally got his wish and was accepted for training as an airman pilot. He had dreamt of flying fighters, but was was told that he would have to learn to fly bombers. He qualified as a "First Pilot (Day)" on 26 October 1939, and joined 58 Squadron on 14 May 1940. He was on the following raids that month: 18 May - Misburg; 21 May - Julich; 22 May - Hirson; 24 May - Grongion. During June, he was on raids on the following dates: 1,3,4,12,14 (recalled), 17, 18, 20, 26, and 28.

On 1 July 1940, Fred was the second pilot of a Whitley V on a raid on Kiel. The pilot was Flight Lieutenant Aikens. There is a photo in existence of Fred and four colleagues in RAF uniform, and on the back someone has written: "The crew that were the leaders in the first raid on the Scharnhorst in Kiel harbour early in July 1940".

On 3 July 1940, Fred qualified as "First Pilot (Night)", and he also took part in a raid on Rotterdam, with F/Lt Aikens again. He was also out with F/Lt Aikens again on 5th July.

On 11 July 1940, he was with 58 Squadron, flying a Whitley Mark 5 out of RAF Linton-on-Ouse in Yorkshire. The other men in his crew, all seargeants, were: D B Hopes; L Isherwood; B M Bennett; and N Emmerson. They took off at 2135 to carry out operations over Leverkusen. An SOS message was received at 0150 on 12 July. Nothing more. He was posted as missing.
Eventually it was established that the plane had crashed at Berchem, Belgium, and all on board had been killed. The Germans had buried them. After the War, they were dug up and identified, and then re-buried.
The story that I have from my mother and her sister is that the plane crashed almost on top of land belonging to a local resistance fighter, and the Resistance reached the wreckage before the Germans, and checked it out.
The resistance man鈥檚 daughter later wrote to my mother鈥檚 sister, telling her what had happened.
She wrote back, and they continued to correspond until 1999, when it is thought that the Belgian woman died.
My aunt says that her Belgian friend and her father used to give food to some starving Jews. They were caught, and after that had to wear notices hanging round their necks bearing the words: 鈥淔riend of the Jews鈥�.
Fred, and his crew, have war graves at Schoonselhof Cemetry, near Antwerp. Their names are on the Battle of Britain Roll of Honour in Westminster Abbey.

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