F/Lt. John Davison
Royal Air Force 104 Squadron
from:Sunderland
John Davison enlisted on 4 October 1940 and was trained as a Wireless Operator/Rear Gunner. He spent a long time training at Hendon, being there during the great blitz. He was then posted to Blackpool and then Yatesbury in Wiltshire. A spell at Stranraer followed on a ground station where he became a first operator and got his first real flying in a Sunderland Flying Boat. He left Stranraer in early 1942 to go back to Yatesbury for a refresher course and then on to Evanton in north Scotland for gunnery training and he was promoted to Sergeant. He travelled from here to his home in Sunderland in August 1942 to be married. The newly married couple travelled to Barnard Castle for their honeymoon. On the first night the town had its first air raid of the war and he was recalled during the second night.
John then went to Chipping Warden for operational training, was ‘crewed up’ and was eventually posted to an overseas unit leaving England on 20 December 1943. He flew to Gibraltar and then on to Malta where he was transferred to No 104 Squadron. During his first operation on Tripoli the plane was badly shot up but returned safely; the realisation that he and his crew may not last long hit home. The squadron moved to Egypt where John contracted jaundice and was admitted to the RAF Hospital for 3 months, rejoining the squadron near Misurata in Tripolitania. He joined a different crew here and flew many operations. They were then moved to Kairounon in Tunisia from where he completed his first tour. The next move was to Italy where he was commissioned Acting Flight Lieutenant, Signals Leader. He completed a second tour of operations there in March 1944.
At the end of hostilities John returned to the UK landing at Liverpool on 1 April 1945. After an Assessment Board he was posted as a Briefing Officer to Transport Command and returned to Hendon for a short time. He then moved to Holmesley South in Hampshire in May 1945, where his wife Lilian was able to join him. John’s final posting was to Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire in September 1945, where he organised the Briefing Section. He was demobbed in March 1946 and returned home to live in Sunderland.
This is from the information written down by my father before he died in 1994.
