Donald Walker

Squadron Leader Donald Walker (service number 37029) was a British officer who held a pre-war commission in the Royal Air Force, his service number placing him among the cohort of regular officers recruited on short service commissions during the mid-to-late 1930s. By 1940 he was serving with No. 613 (City of Manchester) Squadron, an Auxiliary Air Force army co-operation unit that flew Hawker Hectors and Westland Lysanders. In late May and early June 1940, the squadron flew directly into the fighting on the Continent, attacking German artillery positions near Calais and carrying out supply drops to beleaguered Allied troops before the fall of France; in the weeks that followed, detachments mounted dawn and dusk coastal patrols against the threat of German invasion. It was for this operational flying that Walker was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the award appearing in the London Gazette on 5 November 1940. He was subsequently posted to No. 16 Squadron, another army co-operation unit equipped with Westland Lysanders and based at RAF Weston Zoyland in Somerset. Walker died on 11 June 1941, aged in his early thirties, and was laid to rest at Thornton-le-Fylde (Christ Church) Churchyard in Lancashire — a family burial ground rather than a formal war cemetery, suggesting strong local ties to the Fylde coast.