No. 611 Squadron — West Lancashire

Beware Beware

No. 611 Squadron badge
ⓘ licence & creditRoyal Air Force / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:No._611_Squadron_RAF_badge.jpgView source & full licence →
Group
Fighter Command

About

No. 611 (West Lancashire) Squadron was an Auxiliary Air Force unit formed at RAF Hendon in 1936, converting to the fighter role and to Supermarine Spitfires in 1939. It fought over Dunkirk and then, stationed in No. 12 Group, flew with the Duxford ‘Big Wing’ during the Battle of Britain before turning to offensive sweeps over occupied France through 1941. Over the following years it worked through successive marks of Spitfire on bomber escort, shipping reconnaissance and defensive duties, and provided fighter cover for the D-Day landings.

It was to No. 611 Squadron that Eric Lock — by then the highest-scoring British-born pilot of the Battle of Britain — returned to operational flying in 1941 as a flight commander, shortly before he was lost on a low-level sortie over the French coast. In October 1944 the squadron converted to the North American Mustang for long-range escort work, and it disbanded in August 1945. Its motto was Beware Beware.

Sources: This page was compiled from publicly available historical sources, including History of War — No. 611 Squadron (RAF) in the Second World War and Wikipedia: No. 611 Squadron RAF. The text is original and has been written from factual source material; no source text has been copied unless specifically quoted and attributed.

Photographs

Two Commonwealth War Graves in the Oud Eik en Duinen cemetery of the Hague in the Netherlands. Left: ledger stone on the grave shared by Lieutenant Leckie Springborn, Intelligence Corps, who died in 1945. His grave is shared by Pieter Schram, who died in 1966, and Allegonda Schram – van den Bosch, who died in 1974. Right: grave of Pilot Officer Johan Bosch, who served with 611 Squadron, and died in 1941.
ⓘ licence & creditNannix / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Commonwealth_War_Graves_-_The_Netherlands_-The_Hague_Oud_Eik_en_Duinen_Cemetery.pngView source & full licence →
photograph of Barry Heath
ⓘ licence & creditRAF Official, 1940 / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barrie_Heath.JPGView source & full licence →
photograph of Barrie Heath, of 611 Squadron, with a piece of a downed German aircraft
ⓘ licence & creditRAF Official, 1941 / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1941_Barrie_Heath.jpgView source & full licence →

Known personnel (1)

NameRankStationDates
Lock, Eric Stanley — — ? – ?