"2nd Flight Lieutenant"

[Moonraker]

I was at Yatesbury, Wiltshire, yesterday for the unveiling of a memorial stone on the site of the WWII airfield north east of the village. Looking at the Commonwealth War Graves in the churchyard beforehand I noticed one headstone with "2nd Flight Lieutenant" inscribed on it and dated 1918, or possibly 1917. I didn't have a chance to note down details as we were moving off for the ceremony some distance away, and I thought they would be in my Wiltshire WWI copy of The War Graves of the British Empire back home. In fact this lists only straightforward army ranks - lieutenants and 2nd lieutenants - between May 1917 and August 1918, including three Canadians and one South African.

Any comments on the form "2nd Flight Lieutenant"?

Note 1: A few years ago I was about to resort to the Internet for a secondhand copy of the War Graves register for Wiltshire in WWI when I realised that copies are still available from the CWGC itself - this perhaps holds true for other counties.

Note 2: One of the WWI hangars on the original airfield looks very sad indeed. I gather someone wants to build houses on the site, and I can't see their owners wanting to be overshadowed by the other hangars.

[Dolphin]

Moonraker

I've never come across the rank before. The closest I can think of is the RNAS rank of Flight Sub Lieutenant. The RFC/RAF were simply Second Lieutenants.

It's a shame that you weren't able to record the name of the man who was commemorated.

Regards

Gareth

[Terry Denham]

Moonraker

Re - Note 1

CWGC no longer sells copies of any registers as they stopped publishing them in early 2002.

I can guarantee you this as I was the person who took over their entire stock of old registers at that time (now virtually all gone).

However, you can request a computer printout of any cemetery, county, regiment etc and they will produce this for you with the cost depending on the volume of paper involved.

Re - Original Question

Also, CWGC has no such rank as '2nd Flight Lieutenant' in its database. Their list of ranks is fixed and every casualty must be allocated one of these 2,349 possible ranks. No 'rank' can be entered which is not on their list as the system will not accept such an entry. Nor does the old register have such an entry.

Therefore, this suggests that the stonemason made an error when carving the stone you saw - or he was given incorrect information by someone in the chain. There are a number of 'Flight Lieutenants' and 'Second Lieutenants' at Yatesbury possibly causing the mason's confusion or lapse in concentration if he was working on several of them!

[Paul Hederer]

There were no appointments made to the rank of "flight Lt," until 1 August 1919.

It seems with the date you indicated this is surely a mistake. I would guess he was a 2nd Lt.

Paul

[Moonraker]

Dolphin & Terry - and now Paul, too (whose post all but coincided with this reply)

Thanks for the very prompt responses to my query, posted barely an hour ago. I've no firm plans to be around Yatesbury for a while but next time I'm passing I'll check out the name.

Guess I was lucky to get the Wiltshire WWI register when I did.

Moonraker

[Frank_East]

Note 2: One of the WWI hangars on the original airfield looks very sad indeed. I gather someone wants to build houses on the site, and I can't see their owners wanting to be overshadowed by the other hangars.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The last I heard was that an Asian business had bought the airfield and proposed to restore it as a RFC memorial site.

Obviously building development gives a better return.

[Moonraker]

I returned to Yatesbury yesterday. (Is it really almost three years since I started this thread?) There's not much left of one Great War hanger, but restoration work on another seems to be going well. Then I walked along to the churchyard, this time with pen and paper, and checked out the grave of the "2nd Flight Lieutenant" referred to above. He was Robert E Gorman, who died on July 27, 1918. Other officers' graves of 1918 gave the normal army rank. CWGC gives Gorman's rank as Second Lieutenant.

Though the other RFC/RAF graves are the usual CWGC design, Godwin's is a larger one "erected by his mother", who presumably told the stonemason what to put on it and was confused re the changeover from army to RAF ranks.

Moonraker

Moonraker

[Starlight]

"Airmen Died . . . " also has Robert Emmett Gorman listed as a 2nd lieutenant. Whilst flying in RE8 number B5029 he collided with another RE8 (E152) piloted by 2nd Lt R J Davidson, also of 36 TDS. Both men were killed.