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The first day of the Battle of Messines was a difficult day for 6 Squadron, with two aircraft destroyed, four officers killed, one taken as POW and three badly injured. The exact fate of one of the pilots who gave his life on that day, Lt Arthur Phillippo, has remained a mystery until last month (July 2022), when I read on a WW1 forum that the WW1 medals and bronze Memorial Death Plaque of a fellow 6 Squadron pilot, Capt Sydney Philip Smith, had been sold at an eBay auction f

I recently worked on an enquiry regarding the role of flying observers during WW1 and the topic widened to the growth of the RFC/RAF and...

This 2019 satellite image of the Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery (formerly the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery and now known simply as the Rasheed Cemetery) has been overlaid with the outline of the 1964 Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) official plan of the cemetery, complete with grave allocation of the 299 burials. This photograph will be useful in Phase 2 of the restoration, as it shows the exact position of the headstone concrete bases, upon which the existing and re

Anyone interested in WW1 aviation would know of the extraordinary adventures and inventiveness of Wing Commander Louis Strange DSO, OBE,...

I recently received this photograph showing a group of RAF Corporals standing in front of a sign that read "Hinaidi East". With an...

On the 7th June 1928 at RAF Hinaidi, the hangar containing 70 Squadron’s ‘A’ Flight bombers caught fire, with four Vickers Victorias (Serials J8226, J8227, J7923 and J7847) destroyed in the blaze as well as equipment and five Lion replacement engines. Amazingly I have found no record of injuries or death. The cause of the fire was eventually put down to a mechanic forgetting to turn off the petrol cock on one of the bombers before disconnecting the petrol pipe and the spilt p