Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
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501241
Lt. Commander Geoffrey Legge
Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve Fleet Air Arm
(d.Nov 1940)
I am the younger son of Lt. Commander Geoffrey Legge RNVR who in fact owned the 50 acre site of St Merryn Aerodrome, St Merryn, Cornwall, before the war through his business together with William Rhodes Moorhouse. At the time he owned property at Harlyn Bay (which is still in the family) and kept various aircraft there including his Percival Q6 reg: G-AFFE, Whitney Straight etc which he kept in the black hanger there (which still stands today). This hangar is also where Nick Grace
rebuilt his Spitfire Mk 9 which Carolyn flies today. The Admiralty
requisitioned St Merryn airfield to become HMS Vulture II in 1940 together with the Q6. Regrettably my father was killed whilst in the Fleet Air Arm, flying a Proctor from Lee on Solent down to his old base, St Merryn. Due to bad weather, this happened somewhere near Exeter in November 1940. He is buried in the graveyard at St Merryn. As a boy I grew up at Harlyn Bay and used to cycle up to the airfield, fascinated by the aircraft, and Mother of course, knew a number of the servicemen at Camp as we called it, and we made a lot of friends there.