Wing Commander R.C. Hancock was the pilot of a Percival Proctor which crashed and burned out on take-off at Roborough airfield, Plymouth, at 5.30pm on the evening of Monday, 9th June 1941. Suffering multiple injuries, he died of wounds in the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth the following day.
Christened ‘Richard Claude’ but always known as ‘Dick’, he was the unmarried brother of sisters, Iris and Beryl, married to Arthur and Jack Gould of Lower Hisley and Long Close respectively. The family remember Dick as something of a dare-devil; one anecdote recalls how, ‘to prove himself’, he flew under Clifton suspension bridge.
Born in Warwickshire and educated at Blundell’s School, Tiverton, he became an RAF cadet but, it appears, gained his pilot’s licence privately before emigrating and joining the Royal New Zealand Territorial Air Force. A few years’ later, he was back in England and back with the RAF.
In 1940 he was elevated to Wing Commander and posted to command No. 16 Squadron, primarily stationed at Weston Zoyland, just east of Bridgwater, but with several detachments scattered among airfields including Okehampton, Roborough, St Just and Bolt Head in the West Country and Tilshead on Salisbury Plain. It was during his ‘commute’ between these units that Dick suffered his fatal accident. His funeral took place at Lustleigh and he was laid to rest in the extension churchyard.
On Tuesday 10th June, Lustleigh Bell Ringers will sound a half-muffled peel in his honour.
A more detailed biography will be included in a book to be published by the Lustleigh Society later this year recounting various aspect of the village during WW2.