Anthony Hibberd

Anthony Hibberd was born around 1915–1916 and grew up in Ringwood, Hampshire, the son of Horace Franklin and Frances Muriel Hibberd. He was commissioned into the Royal Air Force as a regular officer — service number 37401 places him among the pre-war permanent cadre — and by early 1941 held the acting rank of Squadron Leader commanding No. 42 Squadron, a Bristol Beaufort torpedo-bomber unit operating under Coastal Command from RAF Leuchars on the Fife coast of Scotland. In March 1941, Hibberd led a formation on an operational sweep off the west coast of Norway and the Skagerrak, where his aircraft located a convoy of destroyers and merchant vessels; manoeuvring through concentrated anti-aircraft fire from the whole force, he pressed home a torpedo attack that the London Gazette later commended as “brilliantly executed.” For this action and his sustained record of “outstanding ability and great keenness for operations,” he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, gazetted on 1 April 1941. Six weeks later, on 19 May 1941, Anthony Hibberd died in service at the age of twenty-five, still at Leuchars where his squadron was stationed. He is buried at Leuchars Cemetery, Fifeshire, in Section E, Grave 33 E, his headstone bearing the inscription “He was not: for God took him.”