Michael von Dadelszen

MICHAEL VON DADELSZEN

Born on 21 April 1916, Michael von Dadelszen was the second son of Herman and Winifred von Dadelszen. He had been working in a Hastings public accountant’s office and studying by correspondence in the evening before applying for aircrew training in November 1939. He began his initial training in Levin in September of the following year.

In November 1940 Michael embarked for Canada under the Empire Air Training Scheme. By February 1941 he was at the No. 4 Bombing and Gunnery School at Fingal, Ontario. A Canadian Researcher for the Aircrew Remembrance Society in the UK, Colin Bamford, lives close to Fingal and provided Mark von Dadelszen with a link to [www].myfinepix.com/blog/381731/329203 from which the photograph (above right) is taken. During its life the school graduated over 6,000 non-pilot aircrew from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Free France, and, of course, Canada. On 30 March went to the No. 1 Advanced Navigation School near Manitoba, gaining his Air Navigator’s badge on 1 May 1941 when he was commissioned in the rank of Pilot Officer with effect from the same date. After further training in Scotland with the 19 Operational Training Unit, on 18 August 1941 he was posted to RAF No.10 Squadron, based at Leeming, Yorkshire. He had 248 hours as a navigator and took part in operational flights over various targets over Berlin, Mannheim, Hamburg and Nurnberg in Germany and Brest and Boulogne in France.

[From Michael’s photograph album, taken in Canada, Michael on the right]

On an evening in November 1941 he watched raiding aircraft take off, and wrote that he was “much moved by the whole business:”

The evening I was looking on was fine, with the sun just setting in a wintry yellow glow, and half the sky a remote blue, and the other half banked high with dense shining cloud. One by one the motors were started up around the airfield and run until they were at working temperature. Their steady drumming was constantly punctuated by the short staccato roar of the four gun turrets being tested, earth spurting from the ground where the bullets converged. Then as the time of

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  • Michael von Dadelszen
  • Frank Meissner

Accession number

736/1337/37650

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