Mystery of poster boy for the RAF Appeal to find family of wartime Birmingham pilot who helped galvanise nation in darkest hour

HE was the poster boy of the RAF – the daring young airman who fronted a wartime recruitment campaign.

But mystery surrounds the life and death of Birmingham pilot Ernest Holland.

Historians on both sides of the Channel are desperately searching for relatives of the Brummie hero, whose RAF bomber was shot down over France.

There are plans to honour him in the French village where he died.

But despite extensive research, precious little has been uncovered about Holland, whose Wellington crashed at Saint Sever Celvedos, near the port city of Caen.

Not even his date of birth is known, although it is believed he was 22 when the craft came down on April 13, 1941.

Four other crew members died, along with nine villagers. One man inside the Wellington, tasked with lighting beacons to guide the crip- pled bomber to the ground, bailed out and survived. Relatives of all the other crew members have been found, but researchers admit they have reached a dead end when it comes to Holland.

In April villagers will unveil a memorial to those who died in the crash, and want a representative of his family present.

The lack of detail is puzzling – because Pilot Sergeant Holland’s face appeared on recruitment posters for the RAF. A member of 149 squadron, he was returning from a bombing raid on a Luftwaffe airfield at Merignac, Bordeaux, when the Wellington was riddled by flak.

Maria Perera, of online forum WW2talk, which has joined the search, said: “We believe Ernest was an ‘observer’ stationed at RAF Mildenhall.

“The nine right under mans.”

Records show Holland’s parents were Ernest, a plasterer, and Ellen from Handsworth. They married on December 25, 1910. It is believed the couple also had a son called Sidney, villagers the noses were buried of the Ger- now deceased, and a sister Vera. She married a man named Herbert Whittall. Ms Perera added: “I stumbled across archive information that suggested Ernest got engaged in January 1941 – he was dead three months later.”

Mystery may surround Holland, whose name is on a memorial near Saint Sever Celvedos, but the crash is well documented. The lone survivor, Gunner Seargent Kenneth Rawlings, was ordered to bail out and light a flare. He was captured and held in a Polish PoW camp.

After the war, he lived in Yardley Wood, in Birmingham, and married widow Peggotty Capell in Bournemouth in 1946

Those who perished with Holland were Pilot Officer Ronald Morison, wireless operator Sgt Ronald Hutchinson, Pilot Sgt John Leo Westley and Gunner Sgt Walter Hugh Wilkinson. None were older than 24. Eye-witness Mme Bourgeois recalled: “The plane crash was really frightening. I will never forget this dreadful event on Easter Sunday, 1941.

“I still see the street on fire and the fire brigade coming from several towns around including Vire, Villedieu and Caen to help out, and the human chain of townspeople passing buckets of water.”