Battle of Britain – Modest pilot didn’t realise he was one of the Few for 42yrs HUMBLE HEROES

HE was among the RAF heroes who defended Britain’s skies against Hitler’s Luftwaffe – but for 42 years Owen Burns never realised he was one of the Few.

Gunner Owen shot down a German plane and later narrowly escaped death when his Blenheim bomber crashed.

Yet it was not until a chance meeting decades after the war that the airman realised he was considered one of the band of fighters who Churchill referred to as the Few.

Owen died in 2015 aged 99. His widow Deborah revealed: “Owen had served with Coastal Command but was assigned to Fighter Command in 1940 where he served as a wireless operator and air gunner.”

After the war, public glory went to the pilots of the single-engine Spitfire and Hurricane fighters.

Crews of aircraft such as the Blenheims were often overlooked, despite taking an active part in the wider conflict over England.

Insisted

Deborah added:

“Despite his role in the

Battle of Britain he never considered himself one of the Few until an RAF function at Uxbridge when he got talking to the commanding officer, who insisted he was.”

Owen was asked to call

Wing Commander Pat

Hancock, secretary of the

Battle of Britain Fighter Association, who then asked him to join.

Modest Owen believed he could not be called one of the heroes who saved

Britain. This was the norm for men who served with Coastal Command, often referred to as a Cinderella Service because it did not gain the recognition it deserved.

Owen had volunteered for the RAF in October 1939.

Deborah, 69, of West London, said: “He told the recruitment officer at the time he wanted to be a pilot.

“But they had plenty because the university air squadrons and volunteer reserves had been called up.

“So he joined as a wireless operator.” Owen was assigned to 235 Squadron (Coastal Command) at Bircham

Newton in Norfolk following the Battle of France, during which the unit lost 20 Blenheims and almost 50 crew in just two months from May to June 1940. He became a gunner.

During the Battle of Britain the squadron’s crucial role was to spot enemy raids, protect airfields and escort aircraft attacking the French ports and German shipping.

Owen shot down a German Do18 flying boat in November 1940.

But when returning from a dusk patrol over the

North Sea on Valentine’s Day 1941, his Blenheim came across enemy aircraft and had difficulty landing because the flare-path lights had been put out.

The plane hit a tree. Owen was flung clear but another airman was killed. The pilot survived because Owen dragged him from the blazing aircraft. Deborah said: “Typically, Owen took it in his stride and said he found himself annoyed because he had planned to attend a Valentine’s dance in the mess that night.”

Deborah and Owen married in 1995 after 19 years together. She is a trustee of the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust which helps retell the story of the Few to future generations.

In one entry, he recalls encountering a German Messerschmitt 110 fighter bomber, limping back from England to France. He is out of ammo so rocks his wings and flies off – a “good luck” signal to his adversary.

He wrote: “All the way back I pondered. Why should I have felt sorry for that German? War is war, no quarter to be expected or given and yet, once the heat of the moment was over, I felt almost glad I had been forced to give him that quarter. “

Sandy, from Harrogate, North Yorks, was barely 19 and working as a lightbulb factory foreman when he signed up in 1936. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during the Dunkirk evacuations. Aged, 25, he was last seen pursuing German fighters over Holland on December 13, 1942. His body was never recovered. He is one of the 20,275 named on the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey – a tribute to RAF pilots and crew with no known grave. Sandy’s long-lasting legacy is the quiet heroism of the

dashing BJ Ellan.