Alistair Lennox Taylor

Alistair Lennox Taylor (service number 39448) was born at Worcester in 1916 and was granted a commission in the Royal Air Force in the late 1930s, going on to fly Fairey Battles with No. 226 Squadron during the Battle of France before moving to the dangerous and pioneering work of photographic reconnaissance. Flying unarmed, high-flying Spitfires with the unit that became No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU), he carried out a string of exceptionally valuable solo sorties deep over enemy territory in 1940-41, including a celebrated flight that secured photographs of the Dortmund-Ems aqueduct after taking off in dense fog, and reconnaissance of the German naval base at Kiel rated among the most valuable for the Royal Navy at that stage of the war. His repeated gallantry brought him the Distinguished Flying Cross and two Bars, and the Distinguished Service Order announced in the London Gazette of 7 March 1941, making him one of the most highly decorated reconnaissance pilots of the early war. By late 1941 he was a Squadron Leader flying the new, fast de Havilland Mosquito, and on 4 December 1941, aged 25, he and his navigator Sergeant Sidney Horsfall failed to return from a reconnaissance sortie over the Trondheim-Bergen area of Norway in Mosquito PR Mk I W4055 — the first operational casualties of No. 1 PRU and the Mosquito’s first combat loss. Having no known grave, Alistair Lennox Taylor is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey (Panel 28).