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Map of the Western Front with allied aerodromes marked, taken from Steve Buster Johnson's book Over the Western Front Here is a copy of the Cross and Cockade review of my latest book, Over the Western Front as it appears in the C&CI journal for Spring 2019 50.079: OVER THE WESTERN FRONT - 6 Squadron Royal Flying Corps by Steve 'Buster’ Johnson. FeedaRead.com Publishing. 276pp, 215x280mm, Softback, Illustrated. ISBN 978-1-935881-67-4 The author's grandfather served with 6 Squadron in France and Belgium from November 1915 to January 1918, His service was as an ordinary airman who specialised in working with wireless equipment. The squadron helped pioneer the use of wireless in France before the creation of the HQ WT Unit, which became 9 Squadron. Fred Johnstone, the grandfather, was posted to 6 Squadron because of his expertise with wireless equipment. He served with the unit for over two years until illness led to a home posting at the Flowerdown wireless school as an instructor. The book is in two distinct halves. The first is a month-by-month summary of the diary kept while in France. As the author explains, diary entries were obviously regarded as being very personal and so were entered in both cryptic and coded forms. Simple reproduction of them would mean nothing to the reader and so the author has synthesised their content. The result works well and the diary entries are a combination of information about day-to-day life in the squadron and the personalities involved. The latter include both flying and ground crews. The photographic illustrations come from a variety of sources. Quite a number are those that had belonged to Fred Johnstone and show the men and women he knew. Others are contemporary postcards of locations mentioned while aeroplane shots come from present day collections, including CCI. The author demonstrates his knowledge of all things 6 Squadron in the second part of the book. This is a month-by-month summary of the squadron's strength and losses. For completeness, it covers the period October 1914, when the unit joined the BEF, to December 1918. Tabulations for each month give serial number information for machines on charge at the beginning of the period, on charge at the end, those struck off and new additions. A further table shows the month's casualties by cause. The accompanying text gives further information about casualties and details of any unit movement. Appendices give information of the unit's aeroplane establishment for selected months, a breakdown of the turnover of machines by cause, a summary of casualties by cause and short biographies of four 6 Squadron aircrew, two pilots and two observers. This book provides a lot of what anyone might need to know about 6 Squadron's aeroplanes and operations and casualties. The only thing really missing is a detailed personnel roster. Exceptional value for the price of a couple of pints of beer.

During WW1, RAF squadrons which supported the allied artillery adopted a clock code system to report aiming corrections to the gunnery officer on the ground. Aerial photographs, at a height of between four and five thousand feet, were taken by a 6 Squadron crew the day prior to the mission, with a clock code superimposed on each photograph, in alignment with the points of the compass. Though the complete clock code employed concentric circles set at Y (0 to 10 yards), Z (11 to 25 yards), A (26 to 50 yards), B (51 to 100 yards), C (101 to 200 yards), D (201 to 300 yards), E (301 to 400 yards) and F (401 to 500 yards), in practice 6 Squadron printed only the A, B and C rings, though fine corrections were interpreted when necessary for the Y and Z rings. Anything outside the accepted range was regarded as a 'washout' and the letter 'W' was transmitted so that the gunnery officer could re-align the gun used in ranging on to the target. I have attached two examples of 6 Squadron 'shoots', both in early July 1917, just after the attack at Messine, with the lower photograph at Zandvoorde showing the accuracy achieved by the artillery shells (see red marks) and the upper photograph at Hollebeke showing that two targets were attacked at approximately the same location. Two WW1 artillery shoots at Hollebeke using the military Clock Code Artillery Shoot at Zandvoorde using Clock Code

Whilst researching the services history of Edwin Ffoulkes-Jones, a man who served with the Royal Air Force in both WW1 and WW2, I came across an incident that took place in October 1920 which involved [then] Flying Officer Ffoulkes-Jones. Whilst flying Bristol F2b fighter Serial No: D8051 on an operation over Kufa on the 19th October, 170 km south of Baghdad, he was caught in a sandstorm and crashed. Though Ffoulkes-Jones was uninjured, his aircraft was destroyed. The following day, Flying Officer A H Beach left 6 Squadron's base at Hinaidi (near Baghdad), flying another F2b Serial No: D7844, and flew to the crash site to pick up Ffoulkes-Jones and take him back to the squadron, sitting in the observer's cockpit. Having covered less than half the distance (53 km north of Kufa and over the village of Hillah), the engine cut out and the aircraft crashed. The pilot was uninjured but Ffoulkes-Jones received a deep laceration to his left knee. D7844 was later recovered and rebuilt, remaining in service with 6 Squadron until the 31st May 1922 when it crashed on landing at Sulermanejeh (144 km from the railhead at Kyri - 288 km NNE Baghdad). The aircraft was destroyed, its pilot Flt Lt F N Hudson died of his injuries and his observer Flt Lt E Drudge seriously injured. To demonstrate how dangerous it was to fly in peacetime RAF, this accident happened only two weeks after a 6 Squadron F2b (Serial No: D7845) suffered engine failure on take-off and stalled into the ground when the pilot attempted to turn back at 100 feet. The aircraft burst into flames and both pilot (Flying Officer L C Hooton) and observer (AC2 G C Butler) were killed outright. Shown below is a 6 Squadron line-up of Bristol F2b fighters, the photograph taken most likely at Hinaidi in early October 1920. The third F2b from the left is D8051, the aircraft that FO Ffoulkes-Jones crashed whilst flying an a sandstorm. Line-up of 6 Squadron Bristol FB2 Fighters, taken at RAF Hinaidi, Baghdad, in early October 1920

Unearthed this week in my mother's loft are some hitherto unseen technical notes my grandfather wrote on the Type W Aircraft Transmitter that was used during WW1. He wrote this at the time he was serving with 6 Squadron at Abeele in Belgium on the Western Front. I will add a photo here but will eventually create a sub menu on this website (update: 2020 - this has been completed) and transcribe my grandfather's WW1 Wireless Transmitter notes for anyone who is interested in the early days of military airborne wireless installations. WW1 Aircraft Wireless Notes and Specifications

Here is a photograph of part of the front page of an album of WW1 6 Squadron photographs donated to Bungay Museum by the descendants of a local photographer, Alan Verso Clark, who served as a photographer with 6 Squadron during WW1. Photo Album 6 Squadron RFC 1916 at Abeele, Belgium

A photo album taken by a photographer serving with 6 Squadron during WW1 has recently come to light after it was donated to Bungay Museum in Suffolk. Though I have yet to view the album, the Museum's curator, Chris Reeves, has permitted me to use any of the photographs contained in the album, so long as I acknowledge Bungay Museum as holding copyright. I have included her just two photos, the first being part of the front page and the second a rare photograph of a mobile photographic laboratory, used by 6 Squadron to process the plates taken by various aircrew members and print photographs of the targets to be used in artillery observation missions. Mobile Photographic Laboratory RFC WW1, used by 6 Squadron when it was stationed at Abeele in Belgium

As part of the research process for my next book, I have come across a 6 Squadron observer who was wounded in action during WW1 but died from his injuries a year after the Armistice was signed. Because he died in a military hospital, his link to 6 Squadron was lost until now. Here is the story of what happened to 2nd Lt Frederick Charles Cook. On the afternoon of 30th August 1918, 2nd Lt B J McDonald and his observer 2nd Lt Frederick Charles Cook (a 2nd Lt in the Bedfordshire Regiment before transferring into the Royal Flying Corps, training as an observer and then being granted a temporary commission as 2nd Lieutenant Obs in the RAF on the 5th August 1918) set out from 6 Squadron’s base at Acq to conduct a Contact Patrol in RE8 Serial E8. The patrol that day was over an area between Gavel and Fontaine-les-Croisilles, a few miles to the west of Cambrai. At some point in the mission McDonald and Cook's RE8 came under attack from an enemy aircraft and they were shot down, with Lt McDonald killed and Lt Cook severely wounded in the back and head. Both men were listed as ‘Missing in Action’, believed dead, but Lt Cook was taken alive and made a prisoner of war by the Germans. After the Armistice (I have been unable to determine the date), Lt Cook was repatriated and shipped back home to the London Hospital for assessment and then transferred to the Empire Hospital in Westminster, a War Office hospital dedicated to the treatment of officers suffering from traumatic paraplegia and brain injuries caused by bullet and shrapnel wounds. There Frederick Cook remained without any improvement to his condition, until he died of Paraplegic Hepatitis on the 9th October 1919, just twenty-one years of age. His death occurred shortly before the Empire Hospital was closed down and transformed into the Grange Rochester Hotel, which exists to this day. Lieutenant Cook was laid to rest in the Luton General Cemetery, only two miles from his parents' home. Though Fredrick Cook's name is recorded on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database as a Royal Air Force officer who gave his life for his country, there is no mention that he was serving with 6 Squadron at the time he suffered the injuries that eventually killed him. Edited: the name of 2nd Lt Frederick Charles Cook has been added to the 6 Squadron Roll of Honour (see below). 6 Squadron RAF Roll of Honour

On the first day of the Battle of Messines, 7th June 1917, 6 Squadron experienced the highest number of flying casualties for any single day of the First World War, a statistic not to be equalled in the 103 years since the squadron was formed. Over a few short hours, four men were killed, three were injured and one was taken prisoner of war. The crew of one of the aircraft lost that day (RE8 Serial No A3214) were reported as 'Killed in Action', though their bodies were never returned to the Squadron for burial at Lijssenhoek Military Cemetery, as was customary for 6 Squadron. Instead, the final resting place of Sergeant Louis Gray (pilot) was the Aeroplane Cemetery on the road between Ypres and Zonnebeke and that of 2nd Lt Morrice Halliday (Gray's observer) several kilometres to the north at the Poelcappelle Military Cemetery, both cemeteries situated a long way from the site of the crash in German-held territory near Hill 60. With the help of CWGC's recent release of a large number of grave registration documents and other official records, I can now reveal exactly what happened to the two airmen. Sometime after the RE8 of Sergeant Gray and Lieutenant Halliday was brought down in flames by German anti-aircraft fire and crashed on enemy territory in the vicinity of Hill 60, the bodies of the two men were retrieved by the allies and their aircraft destroyed by shellfire to prevent it falling into enemy hands. At that time, Lt Halliday's body was unable to be identified and he was buried in a makeshift graveyard by the side of the road leading to Sanctuary Wood just to the east of the village of Zillebeke (Map Grid Ref: 28.I.23.c.85.60), along with the bodies of six soldiers. Only one of the soldiers was identified and none of the graves bore headstones. It is unclear where Sergeant Gray was buried, though it would have been close to the village of Zillebeke and in a makeshift graveyard (see notes below). With some 26,000 allied casualties sustained during the first day of the Battle of Messines, little priority would have been given to the organisation of burying the dead. The bodies of the two men remained undisturbed until after the war, when the Imperial War Graves Commission determined that the remains of the fallen should not be repatriated to the UK but instead honoured where they fell, but in properly designed cemeteries with standardised headstones, no matter the rank of the serviceman. A department was formed in the name of 'Concentration of Graves (Exhumation and Reburials)', whose task was to exhume the remains from informal roadside burial grounds and small cemeteries and rebury them in existing or newly-created cemeteries, each burial marked with a headstone. In addition, every effort would be taken to identify those bodies initially designated as an 'Unknown Soldier'. In accordance with the new directive, on the 14th June 1920, the bodies of sixteen British soldiers (9 ‘unknown’ and 7 identified) as well as 1 Royal Flying Corps sergeant were exhumed from a number of small burial grounds around Zillebeke and reburied collectively in the Aeroplane Cemetery, located just to the north-east of Ypres on the N332 road to Zonnebeke (Map Grid Ref: 28.I.05.b.2.8). Sergeant Louis Gray was identified as the Royal Flying Corps sergeant. At the same time, twenty bodies from the Bedford House Cemetery (Enclosure No 5) and twenty-three from the Lock 8 Cemetery (Map Grid Ref: 28.I.26.c - approximately 2.5 kilometres south-west of Zillebeke) were also exhumed and concentrated into the Aeroplane Cemetery. Three years later, on the 31st October 1923, the bodies of the servicemen buried with 2nd Lt Morrice Halliday at the informal cemetery 500 metres east of Zillebeke, were exhumed, along with 2nd Lt Halliday, and taken to the cemetery at Poelkapelle. After further investigations, the identities of four of the seven bodies were determined, including that of Lt Mortice Halliday, and the men were re-buried with appropriately carved headstones. The mystery has been solved re the 6 Squadron WW1 burial location. Mystery solved of the deaths of Sergeant Gray and Lieutenant Halliday, who served and died with 6 Squadron RAF on the 7th June 1917, the first day of the Battle of Messines

One of my recent WW1 queries involved determining the exact location of Deimlingseck, where on the 31st July 1917 (the first day of the Battle for Passchendaele) a British RE8 crashed, killing both the pilot and observer. The bodies of the two men were never recovered as their aircraft came down behind the lines where the area was constantly bombarded by allied guns. Thanks to the help of Trevor Henshaw in England and Jerome Grosse in Belgium, the exact location of Deimlingseck is the intersection of Wervikstraat (N303) and Menenstraat (N8). close to the Belgian village of Gheluvelt. I have attached two images, one showing the WW1 map grid reference for the location - 28.J.30.c.01.80 - and the other the present day overhead satellite image courtesy of Google. For the story of why this location was named Deimlingseck by the German army during WW1, a good account can be found on the Aerodrome website. Aerial photo of the location of Deimlingseck, at the intersection of the N303 and N8, near Gheluvelt, Belgium The location of Deimlingseck on a WW1 army map, showing the map grid of 28.J.30.c.01.80

I received a request last week regarding the cockpit instruments that were standard in the Royal Aircraft Factory RE8, one of the mainstays of the Corps squadrons in the Royal Flying Corps / Royal Air Force during WW1. I have reproduced below a photograph of a typical RE8 cockpit and labelled each gauge/instrument to the best of my knowledge. Royal Aircraft Factory RE8 cockpit instruments identified

Following a request from a number of people who have read my book 'Leaning on a Lamp Post', I am including here a composite map of the town of Basingstoke (UK), old and new, being a black and white 1894 map of the city superimposed on a colour photograph of the same area, courtesy of Google Earth. A great deal of research went into the section of the book that took place in Basingstoke during 1910, especially in the area around the old wharf (now the bus station). It is interesting to see just how many outstanding heritage buildings were demolished to make way for the Basingstoke shopping centre, an act of vandalism in my opinion that would never be passed today. Aerial photo of Basingstoke (UK) town, overlaid by a 1910 map of Edwardian Basingstoke

I have completed the digitisation of 86 aerial photos taken by 6 Squadron aircrew prior to the preliminary bombardment at the Battle of Messines, after the bombardment and also subsequent to the Battle of Messines. In many cases, the location of specific enemy targets are marked on the photograph and I have added the GPS coordinates of these targets for anyone wishing to visit the locations in Belgium. Reproduced below is a typical example of a Messines Aerial Photograph taken by 6 Squadron, showing the damage suffered by the village of Hollebeke as a result of the fighting at Messines. Aerial photos of Hollebeke Village, taken by a 6 Squadron pilot before and after the allied bombardment at the Battle of Messines in June 1917