Philip Reginald Barwell

Philip Reginald Barwell was born on 2 July 1907 in Knowle, Warwickshire, and joined the pre-war Royal Air Force as a permanent officer, qualifying on a specialist engineering course before rising through the service ranks. He was given command of No. 46 Squadron in January 1937, leading the unit through its transition from Gloster Gauntlets to Hawker Hurricanes in early 1939. His DFC, gazetted on 28 November 1939, recognised his leadership during an interception over the North Sea on 21 October that year, when he guided six aircraft against enemy bombers threatening a convoy, personally shooting down one Heinkel He 115 seaplane and sharing in the destruction of a second. After commanding RAF Duxford and flying operational sorties with No. 242 Squadron during 1940, he took charge of the famous sector station at RAF Biggin Hill in June 1941, continuing to fly from the front line and adding a Messerschmitt Bf 109 destroyed and a probable to his score. A crash on take-off in the spring of 1942 broke his back, yet Barwell returned to operations encased in plaster; it was this injury that hampered his attempts to open his cockpit canopy when, on the evening of 1 July 1942, his Spitfire was mistakenly attacked and shot down into the Channel off Beachy Head by an inexperienced pilot from the Tangmere sector flying his first operational sortie. His body was later recovered from the French coast and he now rests in Calais Canadian War Cemetery at Leubringhen, Pas-de-Calais, aged thirty-five.