Loss of 179 San Wellington 8/11/42

**78SqnHistory** · 8th November 2021, 10:23

Does anyone have nay information on the loss of a 179 Squadron Wellington on the 8th November 1942. I am guessing that it was lost on a Coastal Command patrol. I am interested in the crew details, in particular the crew position of Sgt Allan Ivan Mugford who I believe was either the Wireless Op or an Air Gunner. I have the detail from the CWGC website and believe that he may have been on 78 Squadron then with 172 Squadron before finally moving to 179 Squadron in September 1942.

Many thanks

Daz

**78SqnHistory** · 8th November 2021, 13:44

I have now managed to find the information I was looking for. For completeness:

Wellington VIII HX776 took off at 1700 to conduct a FLORA B Patrol and was shot down by an armed trawler whilst investigating a S.E. Blip. The crew was as follows:

PO BRAMWELL
SGT KIRBY
PO HAMMAN
SGT HUSTLER
SGT MUGFORD
SGT BROOKING

Sadly all were lost

Thanks

Daz

**dennis_burke** · 8th November 2021, 13:57

ORB's are available on the UK National Archives website for free download, check out the ORB for all three see what shows up.

heres a how to guide to the free viewer and then you can just sign up to download the files yourself

http://www.ww2irishaviation.com/TNA_...guidelines.pdf

https://discovery.nationalarchives.g...mber%3A+179%22

https://discovery.nationalarchives.g...mber%3A+172%22

172 and 179 ORB's were not the worst for recording postings in and out but i might be imagining that.

**78SqnHistory** · 8th November 2021, 14:05

Dennis

thanks, Ive had a look at the ORB which is where I got the info from. www.thegenealogist.co.uk has a lot of the ORBs digitised and has a name search function.

Regards

Daz

**robstitt** · 8th November 2021, 16:26

Daz, I expect you know that S.E. stands for Special Equipment, a coded reference to ASV radar.

Robert

**dennis_burke** · 9th November 2021, 09:48

Oh I can see a even bigger hole in my bank account appearing. I wonder would work and my good lady wife let me spend two whole weeks mining on a free trial period.

I tested out some of the more stands out surnames in that ORB search function and it looks very good.

One wonders did they have some super OCR or was that done somewhat manually.

**78SqnHistory** · 9th November 2021, 10:01

Dennis,

From my use of it, I would say that it is far from complete, some Squadrons are missing and others are incomplete. Whatever the algorithm for the searches is it can sometimes miss an operation or two, but it is a great tool for narrowing search options and in some cases it provides the answer.

Regards
Daz