224255 F/O. Thomas Watson Craig Royal Air Force 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron from:Carlisle, Cumberland I recently came into the possession of the Flying Log Books, medals, wings and other memorabilia of my late Uncle Thomas Watson Craig who was a Lancaster pilot with No. 44 Squadron based at RAF Spilsby from November 1944 through June 1945.
His first operational flight was on the 2nd of November 1944 for Operation Dusseldorf as 2nd Pilot then two days later on 4th of November he flew as pilot in command of his own Lancaster in operation Dortmund-Ems Canal. He completed his 30th and final mission on 25th of April 1945 for Operation Berchtesgaden. With the end of hostilities, he transferred to Transport Command and flew Yorks in the Middle East and as a Flt/Lt was appointed a route check pilot for 51 Squadron, No. 47 Group.
He retired from the RAF in 1966 with the rank of Squadron Leader and resided with his wife in the town of Knaresborough, Yorkshire. I believe he was a Post Master at a post office there.
A curiosity is that his initial Log Book is labelled Royal Canadian Air Force although all his initial flying training was done at No. 28 EFTS Wolverhampton. He did some time at Moncton, New Brunswick prior to going to Texas for training on the AT6A Texan. His second log book with Air Transport Command is an RAF one.
Unfortunately, in the information passed along to me, there was no mention of his crew’s names but his aircraft numbers were shown in his log with the most frequent being a tail number 625H in which he flew 18 sorties.
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