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Pilot Officer Richard FILSON-YOUNG (120745)
208 Squadron Royal Air Force Date of birth: 29th July 1921 Date of death: 17th August 1942 Killed in action aged 21 Buried at El Alamein War Cemetery Plot XXV Row D Grave 18
Richard Filson-Young was born in London on the 29th of July 1921 the younger son of Alexander Bell Filson-Young, journalist, author and broadcaster, and his second wife, Vera May (nee Rawnsley formerly North, later Bax) Filson-Young, of 22, Ladbroke Square in London. He was educated at Lancing College where he was in Heads House from September 1935 to December 1940. He was a Sergeant in the Officer Training Corps where he achieved Certificate A and was a member of the Cricket XI in 1940. He was appointed as a House Captain in 1939 and as Head of House, a Prefect and as Captain of School in 1940. He gained his School Certificate in 1939. In 1940 he was passed fit for service with the Royal Air Force and in the December he was posted to a training squadron in Rhodesia. He was commissioned as a Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve on the 31st of January 1942. He flew his first operational mission in July 1942 during which time his squadron was engaged in the reconnaissance of enemy positions in the Western Desert. After about a month of operations, on August 16th, Filson-Young (known as "Filkinstein" to his comrades) and L.E. "Chas" Hyde-Parker, who was flying Hurricane Mk II Z5468, flew together in what turned out to be a particularly happy sortie. Hyde-Parker recalled: - "We flew home along the desert escarpment in the evening light, singing alternate verses of Widecombe Fair over the R/T. But later he got rather depressed. He seemed to feel that something would happen. He said, ‘Oh, by the way, if anything should happen to me, would you like my camera? I'm afraid I won't last much longer’. It was often like that, you know." The following day, the 17th of August 1942, Richard Filson-Young took off with his squadron from Landing Ground 39 at 11.45am in Hurricane Mk II Z5468 for a reconnaissance patrol on what was his second sortie of the day. He was acting as "weaver", to Lieutenant Wilfred Jeffrey Vine, South African Air Force, flying Tomahawk AK350. As they were making their way back across the Qattara Depression they in the area of Al Dhaba when they were

Heads House