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Flight Sergeant Anthony Guiscard HARBOTTLE (926870)
58 Squadron Royal Air Force Date of birth: 20th August 1914 Date of death: 16th October 1944 Killed on active service aged 30 Commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial Panel 218
Anthony Guiscard Harbottle was born in Essex on the 20th of August 1914 the eldest son of Captain Thomas Cecil Benfield Harbottle RN and Kathleen Millicent (nee Kent) Harbottle of Lavender Farm, Broadstone in Dorset. He was educated at Lancing College where he was in Sandersons House from May 1928 to July 1933.On leaving school he enlisted in the Metropolitan Police as Police Constable 825 and was based at the station at 458 Bethnal Green Road in 1939. He was a member of the M.C.C. He later enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve where he rose to the rank of Flight Sergeant. He was posted, 58 Squadron based at RAF Stornaway, operating Halifax aircraft where they had recently switched from anti submarine work to attacks on shipping off Norway and in the Skaggerak. At 7.10pm on the 16th of October 1944 Anthony Harbottle and his crew took off from RAF Stornaway in Halifax HX158 for a non-operational training flight involving night dropping of flares over the ocean. It was seen at 8.30pm operating normally and later radar plots showed the aircraft approaching the airfield and passing over it at a height of 2,000 to 3,000 feet. At 11.13pm, when the aircraft was 18 miles to the south of the airfield, the radar plot faded. At 9.10pm the destroyer, HMS Duncan, spotted the aircraft flying erratically at a height of 200 feet before it crashed into the sea about 10 miles to the south east of Shiant Island, towards the Isle of Skye. The vessel proceeded immediately to the spot and located the wreckage of the aircraft. There were no survivors. The crew was:- Sergeant Derrick Thomas Bax (Flight Engineer) Pilot Officer Henry Holmes Chapman RAAF (Navigator) Flight Sergeant Anthony Guiscard Harbottle (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner) Warrant Officer 2nd Class Douglas James Edmiston RNZAF (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner) Pilot Officer William “Willie” Jones (Rear Gunner) Flight Lieutenant Clive Desmond Young (Pilot) 1st Lieutenant C.D. Hendrickson USAAF (2nd Pilot) Flight Sergeant Frederick Mockridge (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner) Searches the next day recovered the body of Flight Lieutenant Young and further wreckage, but no trace of the rest of the crew was found. He is commemorated on the M.C.C. war memorial at Lord's Cricket Ground.

Sandersons House