WHEN David Pike read an article on this Helensburgh Heritage Trust website about a Consolidated Catalina flying boat crash landing he was very surprised . . .
The description of the incident on Saturday January 31 1942 mentioned his late grandfather, Squadron Leader Phillip Pike, as the pilot.
THE TALES of courage and often the supreme sacrifice by Helensburgh and district men in World War One are many and moving . . .
But it is likely that the story of Lance Corporal John McDougall DCM is unique in that he was once declared a deserter — and later was awarded Britain’s second highest award for bravery.
FIVE Helensburgh men were able to return home after being forced to work as World War Two prisoners of war on the notorious ‘Railway of Death’ built in Burma and Thailand.
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Neilly McGinley, Ned Killen, Jim Jardine, Peter McKell, and Neil’s cousin Neil ’Scrapper’ Sharkey all survived a dreadful chapter in their young lives, imprisonment and torture at the hands of cruel Japanese guards.
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.
THE CENTENARY in 2018 of the end of the First World War resulted in a lot of fascinating research on Helensburgh and district people who lost their lives in the conflict.
The stories of many — from the only woman named on the WW1 panel on the Hermitage Park Cenotaph to the chaplain who lost his life when a hospital ship was torpedoed – can be seen on this Helensburgh Heritage Trust website.
DATELINE: RAF Invergordon, Scotland, May 2 and 3, 1940 . . .
Lieutenant Haakon Offerdal arrives in Norwegian Heinkel 115. Flying boat Cabot arrives from Helensburgh.
THURSDAY JUNE 6 2019 was the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy which were to change the course of World War Two.
It was marked in Helensburgh that night when the Victoria Hall hosted an anniversary concert organised by Helensburgh Rotary Club and featuring the HMS Neptune Volunteer Band and the local Military Wives Choir.
A NAVAL officer from Helensburgh led a United Kingdom team which helped rescue seven Russian sailors from a trapped submarine — actions which resulted in thanks from president Vladimir Putin.
The leader of the team was Commander Ian Riches, who lived in Victoria Road and since retiring from the navy has made his home in Perthshire.
