Update July 2015: Have recently been contacted by Malcolm Crosher, Charles' son, who has sent in the following pictures and information. Thank you Malcolm for your contributions of which there will be more to follow soon. Much appreciated.

Charles Crosher - 1942 (Malcolm Crosher)

My father was Sgt., later W/o Charles Ernest Crosher, who according to his flight log, joined 59 Squadron as an Observer on 1st August 1940.

My father flew initially with P.O. Sandes, then on a couple of practice bombing raids at the end of August with P.O. Wenman. He then transferred to P.O. Wightman’s crew until early June 1941, when he joined F.Lt. Buchan’s crew until the end of July 1941. A total of 202.10 hrs flying, of which 185.47 hrs was operational.

He then spent some time at R.A.F. Cranwell, before finally joining 31 O.T.U. as a Warrant Officer, and crossing the Atlantic aboard RMS Queen Mary. He was then stationed at R.A.F. Debert in Canada as a Navigation Instructor in June 1942, before being invalided out of the R.A.F, having caught Tuberculosis in August 1942.

Most of these details are taken from his Flying Log-book, which I discovered when clearing my late mother’s house some 3 years ago.

I knew little of my father's flying record until after he died, he was a very private man, and always refused to answer any questions about the war, but I learnt a little from my mother, She was living with her parents near Thorney Island during early 1941, and remembered watching the aircraft taking off from a nearby hill, but they only met later in 1942 when she was in the WAAF, stationed near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire.

They married in 1948. My father joined the family garage in Melton, continuing until his death on 19th August 1967 as a result of the T.B. from which he had never really recovered.