'The noblest gift a hero leaves his race, is to have been a hero'.

I alluded last time to the loss of 95 aircraft on the 30^th/31^st March Nuremberg operation. Among the casualties were Sgt William Allan RAAF and P/O Cyril Barton. 

Sgt Allan, as you will be aware, had been one of Jim Ives's crew at 625 Squadron and was posted to 166 Squadron when the crew was split up. William Allan died when 166 Squadron Lancaster ME624, piloted by F/Sgt Roy Fennell, was attacked by a night-fighter and exploded on Giessen Airfield. One member of the crew, F/Sgt W Kiegwin, was able to bale out of the stricken aircraft, his six crew-mates F/Sgt R Fennell, Sgt W Pettis, F/Sgt J Smyth, F/Sgt D Harvey RAAF, F/Sgt A Jones and Sgt W Allan RAAF died.

P/O Barton had crossed the Atlantic on HMT Pasteur as a pilot u/t of class 42G, the same course as Jimmy Ives. Barton was apparently held back during his US training due to sickness and graduated as a member of class 42J.

P/O Cy Barton was yet another example of a young pilot who stayed at his post to the very last. Having been shot-up by night-fighters while seventy or so miles short of Nuremberg, with the intercom system u/s, fuel tanks and one engine of Halifax LK797 damaged, rendering the turrets out of action, a misinterpreted order led the b/a, nav and w/op to bale out. Barton pressed on and delivered his bomb-load and made for home, navigating as best he could by a chart strapped to his leg.

Having negotiated strong headwinds on the return flight the young pilot was nearing exhaustion. The aircraft crossed the English coast 90 miles north of where it should have with its fuel tanks all but empty. 

 

Flying at low level the two port engines ran out of fuel and stopped, too low to parachute out the remaining crew members took up crash positions and Cy Barton, flying on one engine attempted to find a suitable piece of ground for a crash landing. P/O Barton put the aircraft down, narrowly missing a row of miners' cottages and the pit-head at Ryhope Colliery, Tyne and Wear, clipping one cottage and crashing into the hillside. Cyril Barton was still alive when he was pulled from the wreckage, but died shortly after arriving at nearby Cherry Knowle Hospital. His three remaining crew-mates f/eng Sgt M E Trousdale, and a/gs Sgts H C H D Wood and F Bryce were injured, but survived. Sadly, George Heads a miner on his way to work was killed when the Halifax's tail assembly struck him.

For his gallantry in pressing-on to bomb despite the damage incurred to his aircraft, returning to England, avoiding disastrous damage to Ryhope village and for saving the lives of his three crew-mates, P/O Cyril Joe Barton was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.