STILL HIGH

It is a noteworthy feat to live to 100 but for former RAF Pathfinder pilot Ernie Holmes — one of the last of the Lancaster bomber crews from World War II — that is just one of a long list of his achievements.

The hero of the skies celebrates his 100th birthday today, comfortably seated in Kincarathie House residential home in Perth rather than in the cramped cockpit he was once master of.

Ernie – referred to in more formal times as Flight Lieutenant Ernest Holmes, and by his flying friends as Ernie ‘Sherl-E’ Holmes, a Sherlock Holmes reference – is the holder of a prestigious list of honours for his skill and bravery.

In May 1944, he was forced to parachute into occupied Holland when his plane crashed.

After initially evading capture, he was eventually taken to a PoW camp where he lived out the rest of the war.

Although Ernie was originally from the northeast of England, he came to Perth in 1941 to do his flight training and was in No 35 Squadron RAF, an elite squadron within No 8 (Pathfinder) Group RAF. married, had a family and trained hundreds of others to fly.

In 1954 he had a serious scrape when he survived a crash in a Chipmunk small aircraft while flying over Errol.

Ten years later, he helped out two young pupils he had been training to fly when the twin-engined Cessna 310 burst into flames after an accident, also at Errol.

The heroism of his actions was covered in national papers as well as the PA.

Staff at Kincarathie House, where he now lives, report that, despite his long span of life, Ernie is still as sharp as ever and will be enjoying having beaten the enemy of time to make it to this centenarian milestone.

When Ernie was featured on an episode of the BBC programme Songs of Praise in 2018, he talked about how his wartime crash over the Netherlands “reawakened” his Christianity. The man who sheltered him – Fons van der Heijden – after his Lancaster bomber crashed, risked his life to save the British pilot. Ernie remembered the pain of hearing the Dutchman had been shot by the Germans just before the war ended, having been uncovered for hiding a number of Allied fugitives. He said: “There is no greater love than he who would give himself for another.”

Aero-author Ken Bruce wrote a book on Perthshire’s flying history, Where Sky and

Summit Meet, in which he detailed Ernie’s bombing mission.

Aged 22 at the time, Ernie’s plane was downed and he was later captured and made a PoW.

Holmes was the Lancaster’s pilot, one of three from an eight-man crew who survived the crash.

Equipped with cuttingedge navigation aids and flares, the Pathfinders were charged with providing target marking ahead of and during bombing missions, with this one heading for Dortmund.

“Eighteen Avro Lancasters were lost on the Dortmund raid, about five per cent of the total bombing force including that piloted by Holmes,” Ken wrote in his book.

“On board ND762 was an eight-man crew, which had flown many missions together, always in the spirit of the squadron’s motto, ‘Uno Animo Agimus’ (‘We Act with One Accord’).

“The Lancaster was homeward bound, flying at 16,000 feet, when it was engaged by a German night fighter. A brief attack ended at 0129 hours when the Lancaster exploded, killing five of the crew members, throwing out three of the crew with their parachutes, all of whom reached the ground alive.

“The debris from the bomber fell between Middelbeers (Noord Brabant) and Vessem, 14km west of the centre of Eindhoven in Holland.

“Holmes and his comrade Coleman initially evaded capture and aided by Dutch locals, went underground.”

Ernie was able to make his way to a nearby property called Netersel Farm, where he was taken in and hidden in secret by the family.

But he moved on and his passage down the escape line to Spain ended in Antwerp where he was betrayed to the Gestapo.

Coleman and Holmes were both captured in Antwerp on June 17, 1944, interrogated by the Gestapo and confined in a PoW camp until the end of the war.

As the Allies and the Red Army advanced into Axis held territories, prisoners were force marched to other PoW camps.

In the bitter cold winter of 1944, Holmes and his fellow prisoners were made to walk hundreds of miles.

Stalag Luft III where he was a PoW, was the same camp that had the Great and the Wooden Horse Escapes.

Holmes was repatriated in May 1945, after a year of imprisonment.

During his training at RAF Perth, he had met local woman Irene Spinks. The couple married at the West Church (today St Matthew’s Church) in 1946.

The early years of their married life were spent on various RAF bases and their daughter Alison was born in 1948 and son David was born in 1952.

Ernie and Irene returned to Perth in 1954 when he became a flight instructor for the University of Glasgow Air Squadron, and later joined the air squadron of the University of St Andrews.

There was a hairy moment for Ernie in 1954, when he crashed in a Chipmunk aircraft.

Ernie and his pupil, Cadet Pilot J Mustarde from Campbelltown, were flying near Errol on September 23 when they had difficulties and had to bail out.

The aircraft crashed in a field and came down with such force that much of it was buried.