Donald William Scivier

Donald William Scivier (service number 43073) was a career Royal Air Force officer who held a permanent commission and rose to the rank of Acting Wing Commander by the summer of 1941. He commanded No. 105 Squadron RAF, a Bristol Blenheim light-bomber unit that was detached from the United Kingdom to Malta between July and September 1941 to strike at Axis shipping, supply lines, and military installations across the central Mediterranean and North Africa. For his services during this demanding period of low-level offensive operations, he was awarded the Air Force Cross, gazetted on 12 January 1943 with effect from 4 June 1941. On 22 September 1941, six Blenheims from the squadron attacked German barracks and fuel dumps at Homs on the Libyan coast; during the strike, Scivier made a sharp turn and came up beneath the aircraft of Sergeant Williams, whose propellers sliced through the fuselage of his Blenheim, sending it into a steep dive from which there was no recovery. Scivier and both members of his crew — Flight Sergeant Leonard Martin Barnett, his observer, and Sergeant Brian Gray, his wireless operator and air gunner — were killed instantly, the last aircrew the squadron lost during its Malta detachment. He is buried in Tripoli War Cemetery, Libya, in a joint grave (11.G.3).