Victor Anthony Ricketts

Victor Anthony Ricketts was born on 27 January 1913 in Penzance, Cornwall, and built an early reputation as the Air Correspondent for the London Daily Express, obtaining his Aero Certificate in February 1936. In March 1938 he partnered with test pilot Arthur Edmund Clouston for a celebrated round-trip flight to New Zealand and back in the de Havilland DH.88 Comet G-ACSS, a 26,450-mile journey completed in under eleven days that established eleven FAI world records, including the first direct England–New Zealand–England round trip. He joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as a Sergeant-Pilot in March 1939, was commissioned in February 1940, and served with No. 248 Squadron during the Battle of Britain period. By early 1942 he was flying Mosquito photo-reconnaissance sorties with No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit, regularly crewing with navigator Flight Sergeant George Boris Lukhmanoff. On 4 March 1942 he pressed through atrocious weather to photograph the Renault works near Paris in the aftermath of a Bomber Command raid, an act of persistence and skill recognised with the Distinguished Flying Cross gazetted on 2 June 1942. On 12 July 1942, aged twenty-nine, Flight Lieutenant Ricketts and his navigator failed to return in Mosquito PR II W4089 from a photographic mission to Strasbourg and Ingolstadt; the aircraft came down near Calais, and both airmen were later reinterred at Calais Canadian War Cemetery, Leubringhen, France, where Ricketts lies at grave reference 3.D.6.