P/O ROBERT THOMPSON, 266 Sqdn RAF                    Grave n° 1

August 3rd 1943 - . At 9.20am the squadron put up 10 aircraft from its forward base at Portreath in Cornwall to accompany eight bomb-carrying Typhoons ( Bomphoons) of 183 Sqdn whose target was Guipavas airfield. However Guipavas was covered in cloud, and the aircraft returned an hour later without delivering their attack.

Another raid was organized in the early evening of the same day. The task of 266 Sqdn this time was to act, with 610 Sqdn, as cover over target, that is to say Guipavas. Led by Squadron Leader A.S. MacIntyre (killed in action on August 15^th 1943 and buried in Le Folgoët), the 10 Typhoons of 266 Sqdn took off from Portreath at 19.40hrs and flew low over the Channel for 20 minutes.

Approaching the French coast near Pontusval (Brignogan), they climbed to 7000ft, arrived over Guipavas at 20.24hrs, and began a sweep north and west. About six miles north-west of Milizac the squadron turned again towards Guipavas, and about 12 miles north-west of the airfield they sighted two enemy aircraft, with another six or eight closer to Guipavas on the same bearing.

Squadron Leader MacIntyre and his n°. 2, Pilot Officer R.K. ‘Bundu’ Thompson, turned to investigate; in so doing they came face to face with half a dozen or more FW 109s approaching out of the sun from the west. The latter had not been seen by the rest of the squadron but S/Ldr MacIntyre and P/O Thompson attacked regardless.

In the ensuing dogfight, S/Ldr MacIntyre’s Typhoon was hit by enemy fire in the fuselage and ailerons ; and as the enemy aircraft broke away P/O Thompson‘s Typhoon was seen spinning down from a height of 4000ft. S/Ldr MacIntyre managed to make for Portreath where he landed at 21.02hrs.; the rest of 266Sqdn landed back at Exeter at 21.20hrs.

P/O Thompson was posted ‘missing, believed killed’. The Squadron’s diary for the day records that while training as an RAF pilot in Rhodesia he had had to make a forced landing in a Tiger Moth trainer in the bush or ‘Bundu’ in the native language, hence his nickname.

P/O Thompson’s aircraft crashed in a field at Kerlin, a hamlet on the road from Gouesnou to Plabennec. The German FW 109 also crashed in the same field; we know the name of the pilot: Ofw R. Ockler.

A note from the Brest Sous-Préfecture dated August 4^th 1943 tells us that, following an air raid by ‘the Anglo-American Air Force’ the day before, a farm-hand was wounded in the shoulder, two cows were killed and two fighter aircraft were shot down in Plabennec, in that order !!!!