David Price Hughes

David Price Hughes was born on 27 September 1917 in Reading, Berkshire, the son of the Reverend Arthur Price Hughes and Mary Hughes; the family later made their home in St Anne’s-on-the-Sea, Lancashire, and Hughes was educated at Kingswood Methodist boarding school in Bath. He joined the Royal Air Force in February 1936 on a short service commission, spending the pre-war years in army co-operation work — serving successively with 16 Squadron at Old Sarum, 53 Squadron at Farnborough, and on the staff of the School of Army Co-operation — before converting to Hurricanes at 6 OTU Sutton Bridge in July 1940. He married Joan Lloyd on 4 September 1939, days after the outbreak of war. Posted to No. 238 Squadron at Middle Wallop on 4 August 1940, Hughes quickly proved himself one of the squadron’s most effective pilots during the Battle of Britain, destroying a Messerschmitt Bf 110 on 8 August, a Bf 109 on the 11th, and on 13 August accounting for a Dornier Do 17 and two more Bf 110s destroyed with a further Bf 109 assessed as probably destroyed — six confirmed kills and one probable in barely a fortnight. On 11 September 1940 he failed to return from an interception of Junkers Ju 88s south of Tunbridge Wells, his Hurricane (serial V7240) being lost with no trace of his body ever recovered; he was twenty-two years old. His Distinguished Flying Cross was gazetted posthumously on 9 May 1941, with effect from 21 August 1940, recognising the gallantry he had shown in those weeks of intense fighting. Flight Lieutenant Hughes is commemorated on Panel 4 of the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede, which honours the more than twenty thousand airmen of the Second World War who have no known grave.