Military

AN internationally respected scientist who was one of the last surviving people who served at wartime RAF Helensburgh, Professor John Allen, died on October 25 2019 at the age of 98.

News of his death at Halesworth, Suffolk, came from Mrs Frances McLaren, nee Shedden, who served alongside John at the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at Rhu and Helensburgh during World War Two.

THE B-20 was a revolutionary World War Two flying boat about to be put through its paces by RAF Helensburgh before it was granted the airworthy certificate to allow full production.

But tragically the Dumbarton-developed aircraft never arrived at the Gareloch base.

A LEADING Helensburgh businessman of the 1980s and 90s was lucky to survive on board a ship which was torpedoed during World War Two.

Footballer and athlete Jack Quinlan went on to run several local businesses in the district and was very well known for his charitable work.

A CARDROSS man won medals for gallantry in World War One and went on to become a highly respected figure in Scottish education.

Major Robert Kinloch, MC, Croix de Guerre, MA, FEIS, lived in the village for many years, and was for a decade head teacher of the village primary school.

EVERY picture tells a story. A faded family photograph taken at 128 West Princes Street, Helensburgh, during World War Two was a happy moment during an unfolding story of action, death and drama.

Retired Merseyside newspaper editor Robin Bird, who sourced this material during his ongoing search for the history of the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment, said that it is also a story of a secret army force within a secret air force at Helensburgh.

PHOTOGRAPHER Bob Bird hated doing Home Guard duties at RAF Helensburgh during World War Two. He was not alone.

As a secret establishment RAF Helensburgh provided its own security with RAF personnel supported by all trades.

AN INFANTRY sergeant from Garelochead won two gallantry medals before he was killed in action on September 4 1917.

Born in Garelochhead on June 7 1896, Sergeant Norman Connor, of the 17^th Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry (3^rd Glasgow), had the unusual distinction of winning the Military Medal for bravery in the field twice in Flanders.

A YOUNG officer who died from wounds received on the Western Front at Ypres is named on the Garelochhead War Memorial.

Second Lieutenant Ronald George Brooman-White was born in the exclusive then Roxburghe Hotel in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square on August 10 1892.

THE GREAT grandson of the founder of Teachers Whisky, a young Army officer from Cove, was killed in action in the Flanders trenches on May 14 1916.

Second Lieutenant William George Teacher, who was 22, lost his life while in command of his company at Thiepval, a few weeks before the start of the Somme campaign.

HAND-WRITTEN notes and sketches by Lieutenant Commander Leo Lane RNVR discovered in 2019 have confirmed RAF Helensburgh’s role in organising the Barnes Wallis Highball bouncing bomb trials on Loch Striven.

These trials took place in September and October 1944, but at the end of World War Two RAF Helensburgh went into mothballs.

A FIRST World War battleship which played an important role in the secret operations of RAF Helensburgh during World War Two was a key ship used in the D-Day landings 75 years ago during June 1944.

At the start of World War Two, Courbet, a former French battleship, was taken over by the British to stop the warship being taken over by the Germans and  used against the Allies.

BOTH Helensburgh Baptist Church and the Helensburgh Cenotaph in Hermitage Park agree that Staff Sergeant Pirret, a recipient of the Military Medal, died in France in 1917.

But strangely they disagree about his Christian name. In Baptist and other accounts he is named as Norman McLeod Pirret, but on the Park monument he is Edward Pirret.