Four: Squadron Leader H. H. Lowe, Royal Air Force, who was taken P.O.W. after his Mosquito was damaged by flak in an anti-shipping strike with the famous Banff Wing in March 1945

1939-45 Star; Italy Star; France and Germany Star; War Medal 1939-45, together with his R.A.F. Halton Barrington-Kennett Trophy Medal, silver, with bronze clasps for ‘Boxing Junior 1930’ and ‘Boxing Junior Feather Wt. 1930’, the reverse officially inscribed ‘562178 A./A. Lowe, H.’, in its fitted John Pinches, London case of issue, generally good very fine (5) £300-350

Harold Hamer Lowe, who was born in December 1912, enlisted in the Royal Air Force as an Aircraft Apprentice in January 1928. Judging by appointments listed in the back of his flying log book, he appears to have qualified for aircrew duties in late 1930 and as a pilot in 1936, pre-war appointments including time with No. 47 (Bomber) Squadron in Khartoum.

By the renewal of hostilities, Lowe was serving as an instructor in Ansons, which appointment took him to Guernsey in the Channel Islands in April 1940, a short-lived affair which ended in his unit’s hasty departure that June. Later that year, in December, he was posted to No. 61 Air School in South Africa, where he served as an instructor until June 1943, latterly in the rank of Flight Lieutenant, after being commissioned back in August 1941.

On returning to the U.K., he attended No. 9 Operational Training Unit at Crosby on Eden, and, following another appointment in a ferrying unit, was posted to a Test Flight in Heliopolis, flying Beaufighters. Then in September 1944, he was posted to No. 603 Squadron at Gambut, in which capacity he flew half a dozen sorties, including a strike on gun positions in Melos and reconnaissance flights over Cos, Leros and Rhodes.

Embarked for the U.K. at the end of the year, he joined No. 143 Squadron, a Mosquito unit of the Banff Wing, in February 1945, first going operational with a “Rover” to Skagerrak on 7 March - ‘Attacked barge convoy. O.K. 2 missing.’ Returning to the same hunting ground on the 12th, his formation was jumped by 109s, while on the 17th, in a strike against Aalesund harbour, two of our aircraft were reported missing - this latter attack, carried out at low-level in the face of intense flak, with rockets and cannon-fire, resulted in the sinking of the German vessels Iris and Remage; see Coastal Command in Action 1939-1945, by Roy Conyers Nesbit, for some spectacular gun-camera footage taken in this strike.

Alas, on the 23 March, the same fate befell Lowe and his Navigator, Flying Officer Hannaford, their Mosquito being hit by flak during an attack on a motor vessel near Gursk - ‘Ditched Gjerdsvik. O.K. P.O.W. First prang!’

Lowe appears to have ended his war as a P.O.W. near Osnabruck, from which place he was repatriated in May 1945. He then joined No. 14 Squadron, another Mosquito unit, in which capacity he served until early 1946, latterly in Wahn, Germany. In 1947, however, he transferred to the Traffic Control Branch, and he was finally placed on the Retired List as a Squadron Leader in March 1958.

Sold with the recipient’s original R.A.F. Flying Log Books (2), the first with official opening endorsement, ‘Previous Flying Log Books lost in the evacuation of Guernsey, Channel Isles, on 16 June 1940’, and covering flight activity from that date until February 1946, and the second the period March to August 1946; Cape Province, South Africa, driver’s licence, dated 28 January 1941, with portrait photograph; R.A.F. Navigation Warrant (2nd Class), dated 14 June 1946; a fine-quality studio portrait photograph, as a Flight Sergeant, and later image of the fjord in which he ditched his Mosquito, the reverse caption reading, ‘The fjord where Daddy was shot down and picked up by Norwegian fishermen. He was met by German soldiers onshore and deported to a German Prisoner of War Camp’; and R.A.F. Record Office statement of services, dated 25 August 1966; together with an R.A.F. prize medal, bronze, unnamed, in its fitted case of issue, and Royal Ancient Order of the Buffaloes (Khartoum Lodge) breast badges (3), silver, silver-gilt and enamel, all of the 1930s period and named to the recipient, two cased.