Mystery picture found near site of Canadian plane crash in Wales...who is he?

[Caroline_d]

Prue

The shoulder badge means he was RAF, the words "Canada" do not appear above it so it appears he may not of been amongst the crew.  The badge would be on each shoulder...both would face backwards hence the 2 different facing patches.

[Bill Green]

Dennford is correct, the bird is indeed an albatross but most people think of it as being an eagle

[Bill Green]

I stand corrected! The bird on the RAF badge is indeed an eagle. The designer of the original badge drew it as an albatross, but the badge is registered as an eagle at the Royal College of Arms. Nothing to do with our research I know, but it's nice to get things right.

[Bill Green]

I have to admit to some confusion folks!
The Winipeg Sun has Allison down as the bomb aimer in the crew,as do  other posts on this thread, but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission lists him as navigator. Could make crew identification even harder than it already is don't you think?
On Caroline's update thread, the picture of the crew in flying clothing throws up one or two useful points. The man on the extreme right has a badge on his upper left arm. In the other photos this was not very distinct and I took it to be a wireless operator's badge but, move back from your screen a couple of feet and look at it again. Is it my imagination, or could that badge have the word CANADA on it?
The man next to him, I believe, is one of the air-gunners, quite possibly the rear gunner. He would be the one member of the crew most likely to be wearing a full Irving flying suit as this chap is. The fellow second from left seems to be similarly attired, although it is not quite so distinct. If that is the case, then we have found Groulx and Du Sablon.
Now look at the photograph that Caroline found of Allison in formal uniform. Compare it with with the facial features of the man third from right in  the crew photo.
Could they not be one and the same person? If so, then the navigator's bag on the ground almost in front of him might well bear out the CWGC listing of Allison as the navigator.
This all contributes nothing to identifying the young man in the original photograph found at the crash site, except that it does confirm that crew members probably wore "CANADA" flashes on their uniform jackets.
Over to you my friends.

[J.J.]

Hi, Bill...Welcome...You'll enjoy this site!
 When I gave the information to the papers, I took the meat of the information
down for them..( they used very little of it anyway ) and as far as I could see
VILLENEUVE was always down as Navigator...sorry if this isn't the case.
We can't hold the commonwealth war graves information as entirely perfect,
either, as some of ancestor's information I found on there was recently proven
 to be inaccurate...However...any thread this large is bound to get confusing...
Hopefully we can sort it all out in the end!
As far as looking at the screen from a distance...I am flabberghasted that you
and others can see anything at all on those little images. 
All the best, J.J.

[Man of Kent]

http://www.airforce.ca/
try this site

[Man of Kent]

I really made a big muck up with this one, and realise that it had been running for a while.
Is it possible that the guy in the photo was from the nearest airforce base, in the recovery team?
If so then there should be a vets site about.

[Bill Green]

Hi J.J.
Thanks for the welcome
If Allison was the bomb-aimer, then that would seem to suggest that the chap on the right of the line is the navigator,i.e. Villneuve.( I remain convinced that Allison is third from right, on Burke's left.) No self respecting nav. would let his bag of tricks stray far, and that is definitely a nav's bag on the ground in front of the three on the right. Given that the man second from the left is the other gunner, that puts Hamel, the pilot, as the man extreme left.
Pure conjecture of course, but with what evidence there is to hand, I feel fairly confident that I'm somewhere near the mark.
I have, of course, just set myself up to be knocked down but, there you go!

[Caroline_d]

Bill, you're not the only one to come to this conclusion with the lineup.  In fact I had an email from Damien about 10 days ago with exactly the same lineup! 

I do think that Allison is fourth from the left, there is a smillarity to his University photo.  Also a newspaper cutting supplied by the University states that Allison was an "instructor in air bombing and aircraft recognition"  He was the oldest at 28 and maybe was training at the time of the crash.

I did have some information kindly posted by Harry who supplied the following:

A note about the aircraft used by the training and conversion units.Quite often these aircraft would have seen front line service but because of their age and operational background they would be aircraft that had been overhauled or repaired from previous operational incidents.Their engines may have been repaired and overhauled a number of times.Consequently their performance may have been less than those aircraft in squadron service.However in this particular case the Wellington had been withdrawn from Bomber Command front line service for about a year and had been relegated to training although the RAF were still receiving them as per aircraft company individual contract.It is only by researching an individual aircraft by its RAF unique serial number would the history of an aircraft be revealed.

In this particular case,No 22 OTU lost three aircraft all with engine problems.Being a two engined aircraft,losing one on the Wellington imposed an extra burden on the pilot even if he was experienced.Being an OTU pilot,control of the aircraft would have represented a high work load for him and his navigator especially flying at night over mountainous country.

Overall,a tragic loss of nine RCAF airmen in training accidents which were prominent throughout the flying training courses in the Second World War.