RAF HALTON 1953 - 1956

(Updated 21 July 2003)

7T5 Memories

Mike Smith

Dear Dave,
Following the reunion at Bromsgrove I said I had some info on the Graduation Dance at Kingsbury. Unfortunately all that I have found is the Entry Ticket. Copy as enclosed.
On a sadder note please find two photographs (see Memoriam Page) taken this January when I visited Kranji War Memorial in Singapore. Pete Arundell lost his life on Tengah airfield when the transport driver took him to the wrong area to repair some airfield lights during night flying.
On that particular day I had been sent from Changi to Kuala Lumpar to repair one of our aircraft. Several of the 75th were stationed there and we got together in the NAAFI that night. I well remember some of the E&I chaps coming in and asking if I had seen Pete Arundell. Imagine the scene at the mess next morning when across the front page was a full report of the incident between a Vampire coming in to land and the truck. Both were named as killed instantly.
I met Pete on "joining up day" 15th September 1953. He sat opposite me from Baker Street to Wendover. He was with a friend of his who joined up with him, though I don't know his name. Again an E&I man.
Pete was a popular lad in our entry, and it was an emotional moment to find his grave that had been relocated to Kranji from another burial ground, due to building expansion on the island.
It was quite a search finding the grave which my wife Gillian located for me.
Another apprentice,76th, killed on Changi I could not find. Probably has not been relocated. It was amazing how many Halton apprentices were buried there. There were four or five in one row.

It is a very sad note regarding a very pleasant young man from our entry who was never given an opportunity of life - marriage - family like the rest of us.

Best Wishes,
Mike Smith.

WebMasters Note - I was stationed at RAF Tengah With Pete and can add a little to the above,

Night Flying was taking place that night, and Pete was Duty Electrician. He and the Duty MT Driver were given the job of placing 'Glim' lamps at the corner of a Perimeter Track to Runway intersection.
The instruction was to place it at the 'perimeter track end' of the intersection. Sadly, the instruction was mis-interpreted by someone, and Pete had placed the lamp at the RUNWAY end of the intersection!
Pete and the driver had just got back into the Landrover, when it was struck by the Starboard wing of the righthand aircraft of a pair of 60 Sqdn Venoms (not Vampires) which were 'taking off'. After striking the Landrover, the aircraft careered off the runway, over the perimeter track, up the side of the Bomb Dump and then back onto the peri track with Fuel pouring from a fractured tip tank.
I was on Crash Crew Duty that night and as we went down the peri track to the aircraft, we could see the Crash Ambulance and wondered why it was standing in the middle of the airfield with it's spotlight on a Landrover with its top missing. It wasn't until I got back from recovering the aircraft to the hangar that I found out Pete and the driver had been killed.

I, along with other 75th members were some of the Pall Bearers at his funeral, which was in a military cemetary on the South West Coast of Singapore Island.

A sad duty, but one I was very proud to do for a fellow 75th 'Brat'. Dave H