Bertie Henington's Biography

MHenningtonAJM154960-170810-04.jpg

Title

Bertie Henington's Biography

Description

A brief biography of Bertie.

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Format

One printed sheet

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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.

Contributor

Identifier

MHenningtonAJM154960-170810-04

Transcription

SUMMARY OF INFORMATION

NAME: ALBERT JOHN MAURICE (BERTIE) HENINGTON

LAST RANK: FLIGHT LIEUTENANT (RAF)

AIRCREW ROLE: NAVIGATOR

SERVICE NUMBER: GB 154960

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: 2 March 1920; 8 Iffley Road, Hammersmith, London

NAME OF WIFE: Enid May Harding

DATE AND PLACE OF MARRIAGE: 18th August 1945; Horncastle, Lincolnshire

DATE OF DEATH: 4th March 1968

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Albert John Maurice Henington (Dad & called Bertie) was the only child of Albert James Henington (Pops) and Ethel May Henington (Nee Churchill) and was brought up in Iffley Road, Hammersmith with his parents.

His father was an automobile and aeronautical engineer who also had an Aviator's Certificate (No 086) from the Royal Aero Club of the United Kingdom. Much of his engineering took place at Iffley Road and at a London Bentley garage, and he was involved in racing Bentleys at Brooklands. I understand that he assembled the first Anzani rotary aero engine in the United Kingdom. He found a Gaillerdet veteran car on a local refuse dump and restored it to working condition. This is now in the Lakeland Motor Museum. He was made an Associate Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1940.

Bertie had a normal secondary education for that time but learned aeronautical and automobile engineering from his father, and became an instrumentation designer. In the autumn of 1943 he joined the RAF as a trainee navigator and was sent to Canada for training.

His service history is detailed in the other attached documents and computer files.

After his demobilisation in the summer of 1946 he settled in Slough, Buckinghamshire with his wife Enid, and like many of his associates, found difficulty in establishing himself in a civilian career to support his young family. Not daunted he taught himself to weave and sew carpets, rugs and clothes for selling, made wooden toys for his 3 children (Tim, Judy and Paul), and built a sailing boat from scratch for family breaks. He worked for AWE, Technicolour, a catering company, and then became a management consultant before he sadly died at the age of 48 of a brain haemorrhage just before his eldest son was commissioned in the RAF as an engineering officer.

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Citation

“Bertie Henington's Biography,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed May 15, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/41097.

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