Looking for links between Chorlton and a wartime airman

Uden War Cemetery

Anyone who has got involved in family history will know both the excitement at making a new discovery about a relative and the frustrations when an individual just stubbornly refuses to come out of the shadows.

And it is no different when you are trying to uncover a complete stranger at the request of a fellow historian.  

It is something I have done before and always takes you on unexpected journeys.*

The enquiry came from a Dutch researcher looking for relatives in Chorlton of a young airman who had been killed in action and was buried in a local war cemetery.

I had his name, age and the names of his parents but all three remained elusive and even after revisiting the usual genealogical haunts all I could come up with was a reference to his birth in Prestwich.

Now the usual practice at this point is to go away and try again later often from a totally different angle.

And this was how the breakthrough came about because there in the Commonwealth graves site was the young man, including his service number and the day he died.  

He had been air gunner and died on June 23^rd 1943.

Now on that particular day the RAF had mounted an attack on a German rocket factory. The records provided details of the aircraft, the squadron and something of the outcome.  This was Operation Bellicose

Armed with this information it will be possible to track the operational records at the National Archive and identify the plane and the crew that our young RAF sergeant was part of.

But in a sense this was not the brief but once you start crawling over peoples’ lives you get drawn in.

And so the search revealed that his father had been born in Manchester in 1885, and that in 1911 aged 26 he was a ships steward, who was at home with his widowed mother in George Leigh Street off Great Ancoats Street.

A decade earlier the family had been running the Trafford Arms on the corner of Chadderton Street and Thompson Street.  It is an area I know well but the blitz and redevelopment have long since cleared most of what was once a densely packed area of shops houses, and factories on the edge of Oldham Road Goods Station.

George Leigh Stret, 1900

It is just a few minutes’ walk away from George Leigh Street and I guess with the death of his father his mother had moved to George Leigh Street where she opened a provisions shop which was enough of a going concern for her to employ a servant but didn’t warrant a mention of the directories of the period.

All of which is a little bit away from Sergeant Vincent Sugden who the story began with and the search for living relatives here in Chorlton.

Now Mr Sugden’s parents were married in 1914 and Vincent in 1921, but as yet there seems to be no connection with here.  His father may have died in 1945, followed by his wife a year, but equally there is a reference to someone who could have been his father dying eight years earlier in north Manchester.

There remains at present one possible line of enquiry and that involves a relative who posted details of the Sugden’s on one of the genealogical platforms.  It is a long shot because she has not been active on the site for a year, but I travel in hope.

And even if there are no links between Mr Sugden and Chorlton, well at least a little bit of his story had come back out of the shadows.

It may even be that my Dutch colleague is keen to follow my friend Rudd who set me off investigating another young airman who also died in action over Holland.  He was Sergeant George Blatherwick and like Vincent died when his plane was shot down a year earlier in the summer of 1942.

Rudd has been campaigning for a civic memorial to all those on both sides who died around the tiny Dutch village of Geffen.

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/George%20Blatherwick

Aircrew of 467 Squadron RAAF, August 1944

**Operation Bellicose targeted the Nazi Germany Zeppelin Works in Friedrichshafen and the La Spezia, Inaval base in Italy and was the first use of shuttle bombing in World War II.

Shuttle bombing involved bombers flying from their home base to bomb a first target and continue to a different location where they are refuelled and rearmed. 

The aircraft then bombed a second target on the return leg to their home base.

Operation Bellicose was the  first shuttle bombing mission. On the night of 20/21 June the RAF bombers departed from their bases in the United Kingdom and bombed Friedrichshafen, landing in Algeria where they refuelled and rearmed. 

On the return leg they bombed the Italian naval base at La Spezia

Pictures; Uden War Cemetery, where Sergeant Vincent Sugden is buried, Commonwealth Graves Commission, http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2082100/UDEN%20WAR%  aircrew and ground staff from No. 467 Squadron RAAF with one of the Squadron's Lancaster bombers at RAF Station Waddington after the squadron had returned from a daylight attack on enemy airfields in Holland, August 14^th, 1944, a year after the squadron attacked Zeppelin Works in Friedrichshafen and the La Spezia, Italy, naval base, Wikipedia Commons and George Leigh Street, 1900, H Entwhistle, m11229, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council