Farewell to d-day hero aged 100
FAMILY’S PRIDE AT RAF VETERAN WHO FLEW IN ALL FOUR MAJOR AIRBORNE ASSAULTS ON NAZI-OCCUPIED EUROPE
A HERO Second World War glider pilot who was one of the first to cross the Channel on D-Day has died aged 100.
Ralph Norbury’s proud family said he was the last surviving glider pilot to land in all four of the major airborne assaults on Nazi-occupied Europe.
He enlisted in Harpurhey in Manchester. Towed into the air by planes, wooden ‘Horsa’ gliders were released behind enemy lines to deliver platoons of soldiers.
They were left were they landed - or crashed - with pilots running out to fight alongside the troops the gliders carried. Ralph took part in the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, where many pilots drowned when gliders landed in the sea, and was part of the 6th Airborne Division which famously landed near the village of Ranville in Normandy, France, at the very beginning of the D-Day operation.
The glider landings preceded the capture of Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge on June 6, 1944, as Allied troops started to land on the beaches at dawn.
Ralph, a staff sergeant with the Glider Pilot Regiment, also fought in the Battle of Arnhem and Operation Market Garden in September, 1944 and Operation Varsity over the Rhine in Germany in March, 1945. Only six members of the regiment took part in all four missions because of the dangers posed, the high casualty rates and the valued skills glider pilots possessed.
Born on Appleby Street in Harpurhey in 1919, Ralph would play in Moston Brook as a child, which flowed directly behind his home.
He went to Burgess Street School, but left aged 14 to become an apprentice in the print industry in Manchester. Ralph went on to enlist with the Army before transferring to the newlyformed Glider Pilot Regiment, where he trained in Lancashire.
“He was very special,” said his daughter Maggie Gilbert, 67, from Tooting, London. “He still had a slight Manc accent right to the end - the odd word was still there.”
Ralph met his wife, Kath - who died in 1989 - during the war in Oxfordshire.
Maggie said her dad never returned to Manchester in the years after 1945.
He worked as a machine minder in Andover, Hampshire, then lived with his family in Tooting, London. “We just thought he would be here forever,” she said. “But sadly he had a fall and could not get over it. He will always be remembered by his proud family.”