Page 95 - All About History - Issue 34-16

All About
YOUR HISTORY

Lucas’s logbook shows the planes
he flew and the tasks he undertook
on a daily basis in 1944

Lucas flew a variety of planes from the Tiger
Moth biplane to the Hawker Tempest fighter

All flight personnel in the squadron were given night and during bad weather. The unit began
escape packs. Like all British men fighting overseas, with 12 men but half were killed in the first
if captured their duty was to escape and these week. Winston Churchill gave the order that they
packs also included false papers and identities. had to consider themselves expendable. Granddad
My granddad was no exception and was given didn’t have to continue flying as he had completed
the French identity of ‘Eduard Monpere’, which his rounds (two was the full service requirement). A picture of a young Ronald
is something my dad finds particularly touching. He had the opportunity to take leave, but along Lucas in flight uniform on
During the war, granddad was known as ‘Lucky with a number of others, he continued fighting. duty with the RAF
Lucas’, because, as the story goes, he kept coming My granddad survived the war having shot
back, although later exploits would suggest that this down at least six V-1s. Eventually flying too many
wasn’t down to luck at all but extreme skill. rounds in an unpressurised cockpit plus a habit in engineering company Foster Wheeler, and in
In 1944, he joined 501 Squadron at Manston. This of 60 cigarettes a day meant he was invalided out the 1970s he helped to invent Computer Aided
was amalgamated with the Fighter Interception for the end of the war. His lungs collapsed and he Design (CAD). Ill health from his war escapades
Unit (FIU) the next day and they formed a small lived the rest of his life with just the one. He spent plagued him throughout his life and he died in
group of elite fighter pilots led by Squadron Leader 19 months in hospital when my dad was a child 1998. As a family we are immensely proud of
Joe Berry. They were highly skilled and were with pleurisy and pneumonia. Later he returned his achievements and modesty during this most
required to track and shoot down V-1 bombs at to work as a draughtsman and technical drawer terrible time.

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