The Good Luck of P/O Alexander Rowe in WW2 told in new Book
Dec 9, 2020 2:44:00 GMT 12
Dave Homewood likes this
Post by berriman on Dec 9, 2020 2:44:00 GMT 12
Going Up Camborne Hill www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08PM3S87V
My book, "Going Up Camborne Hill" chronicles a Cornish tin mining family's dispersion around the world. It starts on Christmas Eve 1801, Camborne, where Richard Trevithick the famed engineer, appears on the scene with the first-ever road-running engine. I imagined my family being witness to it. It then progresses through the generations and their trials and adventures, all based on fact. The family name at that time was Rowe.
The book goes through the ages culminating in the air war above Europe, where my uncle William McCarthy, is pilot of a Stirling bomber. I have a photograph of him with two other airmen I didn't know the name of, and was surprised when Dion Sergeant, who posts on this site, informed me the airman standing to the right of my uncle was a Alexander Rowe, and Alex had survived the war. How could that be, as the bomber was lost, with all its crew?
In August 1942 the crew of Stirling bomber R9160 HA-G and its crew had flown 30 missions, which would normally have been the required tour of duty, it was then Alex was stood down; I believe it was the completion of his second tour. The rest of the crew weren't so lucky, for some reason they were required to fly another mission, their 31st, to Kassel, Germany. For all of them, it was their last flight. They were shot down by a night fighter, and they crashed into the North Sea. They had been unlucky enough to encounter the German ACE, Ludwig Becker, flying his BF110.
Alex Rowe went on to have a distinguished career, flying more missions and providing gunnery training. Amazingly, he survived the war.
Although I cannot find any family connection, my ancestors did travel to Australia, in the late 1800s, and the idea there was an ancestral connection between the airmen intrigued me, and I can't help but think the men wondered about a connection, too, as William's grandparents were Rowe's. A climactic episode in my book tells of the first 1000 bomber raid to Cologne and of Alex and William's role in it, and the fateful day he has to inform William he won't be flying with him.
There are some discoveries in life that give great pleasure, and this has been one of them.
You can read the start of my book "Going Up Camborne Hill" for free by following this link, www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08PM3S87V
My book, "Going Up Camborne Hill" chronicles a Cornish tin mining family's dispersion around the world. It starts on Christmas Eve 1801, Camborne, where Richard Trevithick the famed engineer, appears on the scene with the first-ever road-running engine. I imagined my family being witness to it. It then progresses through the generations and their trials and adventures, all based on fact. The family name at that time was Rowe.
The book goes through the ages culminating in the air war above Europe, where my uncle William McCarthy, is pilot of a Stirling bomber. I have a photograph of him with two other airmen I didn't know the name of, and was surprised when Dion Sergeant, who posts on this site, informed me the airman standing to the right of my uncle was a Alexander Rowe, and Alex had survived the war. How could that be, as the bomber was lost, with all its crew?
In August 1942 the crew of Stirling bomber R9160 HA-G and its crew had flown 30 missions, which would normally have been the required tour of duty, it was then Alex was stood down; I believe it was the completion of his second tour. The rest of the crew weren't so lucky, for some reason they were required to fly another mission, their 31st, to Kassel, Germany. For all of them, it was their last flight. They were shot down by a night fighter, and they crashed into the North Sea. They had been unlucky enough to encounter the German ACE, Ludwig Becker, flying his BF110.
Alex Rowe went on to have a distinguished career, flying more missions and providing gunnery training. Amazingly, he survived the war.
Although I cannot find any family connection, my ancestors did travel to Australia, in the late 1800s, and the idea there was an ancestral connection between the airmen intrigued me, and I can't help but think the men wondered about a connection, too, as William's grandparents were Rowe's. A climactic episode in my book tells of the first 1000 bomber raid to Cologne and of Alex and William's role in it, and the fateful day he has to inform William he won't be flying with him.
There are some discoveries in life that give great pleasure, and this has been one of them.
You can read the start of my book "Going Up Camborne Hill" for free by following this link, www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08PM3S87V
