Kenneth Wood was the son of Frederick Horace and Louise Wood, of Brighton, Sussex. He attended Ditchling Road Elementary School and then the Brighton Intermediate School and was active in the Boys’ Brigade at the Clermont Congregational Church. He had three sisters, Iris (who served in the Land Army and married Sgt. Reg Wellwood of the Royal Canadian Engineers and emigrated to Canada in 1945); Stella (who married and died in the late 1940s) and Jean (who emigrated to Canada). Having trained as
a flight engineer he probably went down the usual progression of Flight Engineers in Bomber Command and was to be posted directly to a Heavy Conversion Unit (H.C.U.) as a lone airman. In this case there is nothing to suggest anything from this normal pattern was followed and that he and the mid-upper gunner joined Clark's already set five-man crew which had arrived at the H.C.U. from an Operational Training Unit (O.T.U.) to form a standard seven-man heavy bomber crew. He was only nineteen years old when he was killed as a result of the accident to Lancaster DS737 on 16th Decemeber 1943.
Kenneth Wood and his gravestone in Brighton and Preston Cemetery, Sussex.
I thank Sgt Kenneth Wood's neice (Mrs Barbara Warnock) and nephew (Colonel(Ret) Chris Wellwood) for contacting me regarding their late uncle and to the latter
for the portrait photographs of Kenneth and his gravestone in Brighton Cemetery.
