DFC for local airman

NWareingR161005-04.jpg

Title

DFC for local airman

Description

Pilot Officer Robert Wareing awarded DFC for his part in attack on Brest harbour. His was one of four crews who volunteered. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were in the harbour but was not known if they were damaged.

Date

1941-04-26

Temporal Coverage

Language

Type

Format

One newspaper cutting

Rights

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

Identifier

NWareingR161005-04

Transcription

SATURDAY, APRIL 26th, 1941.

D.F.C. FOR LOCAL AIRMAN

[photograph]
Daring Bomb Attack On Brest Harbour

For his part in a bombing raid on Brest Harbour, Pilot Officer Robert Wareing, 24-years-old son of Mr. and Mrs. R. Wareing of “Centralia,” Cemetery Road, New Brumby, has been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The award was officially announced by the Air Ministry on Thursday, after a week’s delay in confirmation of the news which was received in Scunthorpe eight days ago.
The story told by members of his family is of a daring “dive” through the inner defences of the harbour, in which Wareing, whose crew was one of four to volunteer for the attack, dropped a heavy bomb on or near a ship in the dock.

Persisted In Attack
It will be remembered that the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, the important German battleships, were in the harbour, but it does not appear certain which of them suffered from Wareing’s bomb. Wareing’s ‘plane was caught in a cluster of searchlights and met heavy anti-aircraft fire from the inner defences, but he persisted in the attack, while the rear gunner machine gunned the searchlights.
Pilot Officer Wareing, who is engaged [missing word] Miss Joan Walker, of West [missing word] Gardens, was a former pupil of the Scunthorpe Doncaster Road School, and later attended the Evening Technical School. He was employed by Messrs. Stephenson and Smart, accountants, when he joined the R.A.F. Volunteer Reserve a year before war broke out.
His brother, Sgt-Pilot Stanley Wareing, joined up at the same time.

Collection

Citation

“DFC for local airman,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 29, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/28328.

Item Relations

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