BLANCH, Keith Charles

1234784, Sergeant, Wireless Operator/Air Gunner, R.A.F. (Volunteer Reserve)

Born 1921, Grimsby

Died 17/09/1943, Age 22, at Northmoor, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, death registered Witney, Oxfordshire

Buried 24/09/1943

Son of Charles Edgar Blanch (b. 1900) and Nellie Garland (b.1903), married at St Luke’s Church Grimsby in 1921

Brother of Roland Edgar Blanch (born 1923)

Half-brother of Margaret M Lancaster (b 1934), David S Lancaster (b. 1938-d. 1986) and Gillian R Lancaster (b 1940)

Husband of Margaret E (Dwyer) Blanch of Cleethorpes, married 1941 (1st Qtr) in Grimsby

Address at time of death: Westfield Grove, Cleethorpes

Keith would have barely known his father Charles, who tragically died in 1925. A steward on the Grimsby trawler Kymric, he died after opening an oven door at sea and being enveloped by a rush of flames, caused by a pan of fat igniting. Newspaper reports say he died in hospital

Mother Nellie re-married in 1934, to Wilfred Skeaf Lancaster, a Merchant Seaman, but the marriage was sadly short-lived. Wilfred died on 9th October 1940, missing presumed killed after the minesweeper HMT Sea King (GY1251) was sunk by a mine 28 nautical miles from Bull Sand Fort.

The 1939 register shows Nellie and the children at 28 Huddleston Road, Grimsby.

Keith was based at RAF Stanton Harcourt with 10 OTU (Operational Training Unit), part of No. 8 Group RAF Bomber Command. His death came as a result of a mid-air collision between two Whitley bombers, 2 miles SE of the airfield. Reports state that the other Whitley (LA872) “took off 2350 hours Stanton Harcourt for a Bullseye detail, only to collide with another of the unit’s aircraft”. Both crews, ten men in total, were killed in what was to be a navigation exercise to a simulated target.

The other crew of the Whitley Z9471 were:

Flying Officer Maurice William Moore, Pilot (age 27)

Sgt Herbert Edgar Scarborough, Navigator (age 30)

Sgt John Gordon Boundy, Bomb Aimer (age 21)

Sgt Joseph Ronald Grimmond, Air Gunner (age 19)

The crew of the Whitley LA872 were:

Flying Officer Leslie Albert Buck (age 28)

Flying Officer Brian Edward Brown, from Canada (age 21)

Flying Officer James Gibson (age 23)

Sgt Jackson Dunbar Arthur, from Grenada (age 24)

Sgt Gerard William Clements (age 20)

 Nellie died in Grimsby Hospital in 1959. Her address was still Huddleston Road (burial records)

After the war, Keith’s brother Roland, a carpet shop assistant before WW2 began, spent some years in India as a missionary with his wife Constance and children Rosemary and Heather. Travel records show him departing from Southampton in 1952 for Bombay, returning to Liverpool in 1957 and then returning to Bombay in 1958. Roland died in Gloucestershire in 1987.