Sergeant T.E.Jones, an airman of 99 Squadron RAF Bomber Command, is remembered on the war memorial in Whitelackington, South Somerset.

The village of Whitlackington straddles the Old London Road one mile east of Ilminster in South Somerset.  Its 14th century church of St. Mary the Virgin is located well back from the road on rising ground.  Between the road and the church is a field in which the village war memorial, in the style of an obelisk, stands in splendid isolation commemorating four men who lost their lives in the First World War and two killed in World War Two.

One of those remembered is Sergeant Pilot Thomas Edwin Jones who was killed on this day in 1939 while serving with 99 Squadron of RAF Bomber Command.  The squadron was equipped with the Vickers Wellington Mk1a, a long-range medium bomber designed in the 1930s.  The Wellington, which had a crew of 6, was powered by 2 Bristol Pegasus radial engines giving it a top speed of 235 mph and the ability to carry a 4,500 lb bomb load.  The aircraft’s defensive armament was four .303 machine guns, two in a front turret and two in a rear turret.

On the 14th December 1939 twelve Wellingtons from 99 Squadron took off from RAF Newmarket in Suffolk and headed across the North Sea to carry out a shipping strike against German warships in the Schillig Roads.  The officially commissioned history reports: “There they sighted a number of the warships, only to find the cloud base, at 800 feet, too low to attack with Semi Armour Piercing bombs.  Under heavy fire from the warships and from nearby trawlers or ‘flak-ships’, the Wellingtons maintained formation and shot it out with the fighters who soon came up to join the battle; but five of the twelve failed to return, and another crashed when almost home, as against the enemy’s loss of one fighter.”*

Wellington N2911 was one of those which failed to return.  Its crew of six, including 27 year old Sergeant Jones, did not survive.

The war memorial adjacent to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in the village of Whitelackington, South Somerset.

Thomas Edwin Jones is also commemorated at the Runnymede Memorial, sometimes known as the Air Forces Memorial, on Cooper’s Hill in Runnymede, Surrey. 

*Royal Air Force 1939-1945, Volume 1, The Fight at Odds, Denis Richards (HMSO.1953).