LAC Gerald Cecil William Stone RAF (533644).
Gerald Stone was the son of Leonard William and Daisy Dorothy (nee Saint) Stone and was born at Northwood, Isle of Wight on 26th March 1917. The family moved to Suffolk after
he was born and he was baptised on 1st February 1920 at Brightwell with Foxhall church. The 1921 Census lists his father as being a bricklayer and being born in Suffolk so they
probably returned to his home area after the First World War. He had a younger brother, Michael Dennis Stone, born in the Woodbridge area in 1926. Gerald was subsequently
commemorated on the Rushmere St.Andrew war memorial in Suffolk which would suggest that this was the village his parents were living in the 1940s. Gerald married Mary Mather
Whittaker, of Newtownards, Co.Down, Northern Ireland.
Gerald Stone is shown on the back row second from left in this photograph of B-Flight of 115 Squadron in April 1940. He sustained slight injuries in the crash of Wellington R3154 on 1st May 1940 but soon recovered as he was flying operationally again by mid-May 1940. Having being promoted to the
rank of Sgt he was Mentioned in Despatches on 17th March 1941 but for service at an unknown unit. He was later posted to 156 Squadron around June / July 1942 and this unit became a
Pathfinder squadron in August 1942 and began flying with the PFF on 17th August 1942. Gerald would have volunteered to serve as Pathfinding aircrew. He flew four complete operational
flights with 156 Squadron and was sadly killed on his fifth. The first was in Wellington BJ669 with F/Sgt Gordon Thompson MacKenzie RCAF as pilot on 8th July 1942. The next three were
with S/Ldr Richard Theobald Collier as pilot; on 6th August 1942 in Wellington X3728, on 9th August 1942 in Wellington DX666 and again on 11th August 1942 also in Wellington DX666.
Having being promoted to F/Sgt he received a commission on 8th August 1942 to the rank of P/O on probation (emergency) (49988). On 27th August 1942 he was flying in Wellington X3367
undertaking an operational flight to bomb the Fiesler aircraft factory at Kassel, Germany when the aircraft was attacked by and shot down by a night-fighter belonging to the Luftwaffe
unit NJG/1 and piloted by Hptm Wolfgang Thimmig. The Wellington crashed onto the Laurenz textile factory at Epe, Gronau, Germany and all on board were sadly killed. The crew were
initially buried in Rheine but exhumed after the war by a war-grave investigation team to identify them and then were then re-buried in a joint grave in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery.
P/O Gerald Stone was twenty five years old.
