My great uncle

[Caesar dude]

My great uncle, John Charles Pengelly was a rear gunner who flew in  Wellington bombers during the 2nd world war.

He never returned after a bombing raid to Berlin on  the night of November 7th 1941.

During my time in the RAF and when I was stationed in Germany in the 80's I found his grave and paid my respects.

Recently I have been researching him and have found that he served on 149 Sqn and had completed 9 previous missions all with different crews. He was relatively old for Aircrew in those days and died at the age of 31.

I am now in the process of trying to find out when he joined up and what he did before the war.

Initially I was just curious about my uncle but as the story unfolds I've become very much aware of his fellow crewmen and the shit they would all have to have gone through

They really did sacrifice their lives in order that we could enjoy our freedom today.

To put this into perspective.... that was in the days when a war was worth fighting for and wasn't about oil or land or wealth.

Peace dudes.

[DigitalBuddha]

My great uncle, John Charles Pengelly was a rear gunner who flew in  Wellington bombers during the 2nd world war.

He never returned after a bombing raid to Berlin on  the night of November 7th 1941.

During my time in the RAF and when I was stationed in Germany in the 80's I found his grave and paid my respects.

Recently I have been researching him and have found that he served on 149 Sqn and had completed 9 previous missions all with different crews. He was relatively old for Aircrew in those days and died at the age of 31.

I am now in the process of trying to find out when he joined up and what he did before the war.

Initially I was just curious about my uncle but as the story unfolds I've become very much aware of his fellow crewmen and the shit they would all have to have gone through

They really did sacrifice their lives in order that we could enjoy our freedom today.

To put this into perspective.... that was in the days when a war was worth fighting for and wasn't about oil or land or wealth.

Peace dudes.

That's awesome, C dude. It's always cool to research some family history, especially if it's regarding an important historical event like WWII. What resources did you use to trace your Great Uncle's war record?

[Caesar dude]

I used the interweb of course DB!!

I put his name into google which turned up his name on a war memorial in Kent where he was from....that memorial had is rank and number...so I chucked that at google...which turned up his Sqn.

I then put the Sqn no into the mighty search engine and found out loads of stuff about aircraft types etc...from there I found a forum about Stirling bombers. (149 converted from Wellingtons to Stirlings in late November 1941 but I didn't know that at the time! I asked a couple of questions and some random bloke sent me the relevant pages from the Sqn  Operational Record Book. Detailing the flight take off and landing times. mission targets  and results...these also included the crew members names and ranks.

The web is powerful and people are helpful!

[DigitalBuddha]

I used the interweb of course DB!!

I put his name into google which turned up his name on a war memorial in Kent where he was from....that memorial had is rank and number...so I chucked that at google...which turned up his Sqn.

I then put the Sqn no into the mighty search engine and found out loads of stuff about aircraft types etc...from there I found a forum about Stirling bombers. (149 converted from Wellingtons to Stirlings in late November 1941 but I didn't know that at the time! I asked a couple of questions and some random bloke sent me the relevant pages from the Sqn  Operational Record Book. Detailing the flight take off and landing times. mission targets  and results...these also included the crew members names and ranks.

The web is powerful and people are helpful!

I assume it was the web, but there are some great online resources such as ...  http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/index.htm

[kilteddude]

I used the interweb of course DB!!

I put his name into google which turned up his name on a war memorial in Kent where he was from....that memorial had is rank and number...so I chucked that at google...which turned up his Sqn.

I then put the Sqn no into the mighty search engine and found out loads of stuff about aircraft types etc...from there I found a forum about Stirling bombers. (149 converted from Wellingtons to Stirlings in late November 1941 but I didn't know that at the time! I asked a couple of questions and some random bloke sent me the relevant pages from the Sqn  Operational Record Book. Detailing the flight take off and landing times. mission targets  and results...these also included the crew members names and ranks.

The web is powerful and people are helpful!

I assume it was the web, but there are some great online resources such as ...  http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/index.htm

This was the site I used to find some information about my great grandfather.  It had quite a bit of useful information on his unit available.