ALEXANDER LEWIS COX
1-11-1919 - 15-11-1941
These are extracts from letters and reports written to the family. It concentrates on my research into the death during the Second World War of my Wellington bomber pilot Uncle Alexander L Cox of Melbourne, Australia.
458 Squadron first came into existence at Williamtown in New South Wales on July 8 1941 and began to establish itself in Britain on August 25 1941 at RAF Holme as a night bombing unit. The squadron was equipped with Wellingtons, the RAF’s most common bomber. The Wellington was designed by Barnes Wallis, the man who also designed, among other things, the bouncing bomb used by the RAF Dam Busters. The plane was described as immensely strong and able to take large amounts of damage and still fly. However, the defensive guns on the Wellingtons were not very manoeuvrable, and the German fighter planes were half as fast again as the bombers, with their top speed of only 255mph (411kph). Wellingtons were initially used for daylight raids, but they were too vulnerable to attack from fighter planes during daylight.
Alex
was a volunteer gunner with the Australian Militia Forces (also known as
Citizens' Military Forces). He joined in March 29, 1939 -- six months before
the outbreak of WW2. He was then living with the family at 27 Hope Street,
Spotswood, Melbourne. He was 19 and a junior salesman with
Isherwood & Bartlett, 185 Flinders Lane, Melbourne C.1. (The company
apparently were "soft goods" wholesalers.) Alex's height was given as 5ft 8in (173cms),
his weight 143 lbs (10st 4lbs, or 65 kilos). The Militia Forces files state
that he joined the Royal Australian Air Force on September 9, 1940. His service number was 400460. He was promoted to sergeant on June 9 1941.
Australian
Department of Defence records on Alex Cox also show the following:
Postings & Training: Bradfield Park and Narrandera for initial training. Embarked Sydney on January 23, 1941, for Canada, arriving February 22. Attended Services Flying Training School in Saskatoon. Embarked for UK June 19, 1941, arriving July 1. Was deployed from Bournemouth to the 11 Operational Training Unit in Bassingbourn [Cambridgeshire], before being sent to RAF Holme [Yorkshire] on September 24, 1941.]
Alex became a flight sergeant in the RAAF and flew with 458 Squadron from RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor in Yorkshire, England. On the night of Saturday, November 15 1941, his RAF Wellington bomber R1775 was sent to Emden in north-west Germany, near the Dutch border, to bomb unspecified targets in the city’s industrial area. He was 2nd Pilot. Forty-seven Wellingtons from various RAF bases took part in the raid on Emden; Alex’s Wellington was one of four that did not return. He was just 22 and was engaged to be married to Edna Smith.
Post-war investigations into the loss of Alex’s plane revealed no trace of it or the crew. The presumption always made in such cases is that the aircraft crashed into the North Sea. This view is supported by the fact that the flight from RAF Holme to Emden would have taken a Wellington about 90 minutes, so allowing for the time that might have been spent over the target area, Alex’s Wellington must have been well on its way back across the North Sea when the last contact, an SOS, was made.
There appear to be no records of what the “contact” was, but it is most likely that the crew broke radio silence because the plane was about to crash. We will probably never know whether the aircraft went down because of damage done by German ground-to-air, or air-to-air fire, or because of mechanical failure. Even if the crew were not killed on impact with the sea, the waters of the North Sea would have been bitterly cold and survival would have been difficult.
Another visitor to the memorial site was Bess Carr, one of Alex’s sisters.
Cousins Fiona Stewart (née Ross) and Ian Richardson with a stripped down Wellington bomber recovered from Loch Ness is at the Brooklands Museum in Weybridge.
My cousin Fiona Stewart and I were allowed into the main body of a Wellington bomber at the Brooklands Museum and it was clear that getting in and out of the aircraft in a hurry would have been very difficult, if not impossible. My guess is that the crew were still in the plane when it ditched and sank to the bottom of the North Sea.
This photograph shows that just one person -- the captain -- was able to occupy the "flight deck" in a Wellington. If he was wounded or otherwise incapacitated, it would be extremely difficult for him to be replaced by the second pilot.
Emden was one of the most heavily defended ports in Germany. When there was an allied raid, the German fighters would stay on the fringes of Emden, for fear of being hit by the intense flak fired at the allied bombers and would instead attack the bombers on their way to and from their targets. The casualty rate for allied bombers early in the war was very high. It was “bloody good going” if a crew managed to survive five raids. The main target in Emden was the German U Boat base. But in the early years of the war the submarines sheltered under very deep concrete roofs and the 250lb and 500lb bombs from the Wellingtons would just bounce off the roofs without causing any real damage. It wasn’t until 1943/4 that larger bombers began dropping 10-ton bombs that were able to penetrate the concrete at Emden.
Alex was a keen writer. In addition to keep an official log, he wrote many letters to family and friends. [See two at the end of this posting.] It had been a Cox family legend that his wartime diaries
were destroyed after the death of his father, A J G Cox, by his second wife,
Phyllis. However we learned that his younger brother, Ian, held one diary, but
did not allow it to be read by others during his lifetime. As Ian since died, I have now studied
the diary, which recounts Alex’s voyage to Canada
and the early days of his flying training in Saskatoon . [See at the end of this posting.] The mystery is why this diary ended so abruptly, without explanation
of any sort, on March 14, 1941. The fact that Alex had used less than a third
of the book and had numbered a further 20 blank pages, suggested that he
intended to continue with it. Would he have been stopped for security reasons?
If so, why did Alex not make an entry that explained that he would not be able
to continue with it? We will never know. No will we ever know what was in the documents burnt by Phyllis.
One visit to Holme-on-Spalding Moor in July 1997 took place with extraordinary good timing. We stopped our car just inside the entrance and spotted an elderly gent scrubbing one of the memorial plaques for the 458 and 76 squadrons. .
He identified himself as Frank Robertson, an amateur local historian and
retired air traffic controller. He said he was
awaiting the arrival of an author and a former member of 76 Squadron who was writing a book. A
few minutes later a car pulled up containing the author, Audrey James accompanied by a retired publican and wartime wireless operator and
gunner, Arthur Briggs. We were invited to tag
along for a tour of the estate, while Arthur helped Frank identify various
buildings and talked to Audrey about his wartime experiences with 76 Squadron.
What we learned from the tour was immensely useful when I made this five-minute VIDEO.
Alexander Cox's niece, Alison Chamberlain (née Richardson), in J Rotherham Memorial's 458 Squadron memorial display, Holme-on-Spalding Moor, October 2015. Rotherham's was later sold to Mindful Memorials and moved to another location. The exhibition was dismantled.
And here are two of the pictures in the exhibition.
Door key found at the entrance to the Sergeants Mess at Holme-on-Spalding Moor.
When the airmen weren't on duty but resting between flights in the Mess, they were able to go to the local pub, the Blacksmith Arms:
Alex Cox's name is on a wall of the Air Forces Memorial, or Runnymede Memorial, in
Englefield Green near Egham in Surrey. The memorial is dedicated to some 20,456
men and women from air forces of the British Empire were lost in air and other
operations during World War II. Those recorded have no known grave anywhere in the world, and many were lost without trace. The memorial has been visited by Alex's brother, Ian Cox, sisters Bess Carr and Rena Wood, niece Fiona Stewart and nephew Ian Richardson.
A popular history of 458 Squadron. Some second hand copies are still available on the Internet.
