Australian Groups

Lot 2290    Session 8 (2.30pm Wednesday)    Australian Groups

Estimate $10,000
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $12,000

GROUP OF EIGHT: Distinguished Flying Cross (GVIR); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star with France & Germany bar; Pacific Star; Italy Star; Defence Medal 1939-45; British War Medal 1939-45 with MID; Australia Service Medal 1939-45. 400279 W.G.Loney on second, third and fifth to eighth medals. '1944' engraved on DFC, fourth medal unnamed, other medal impressed. Very fine.

Ex. Ross Sutton Collection. 400279 F.O. Wesley Glen Loney. RAAF 59 Sqdn. DFC. L.G.: 14Apr1944 'Flying Officer W.G.Loney as pilot and captain of aircraft has taken part most effectively in convoy escorts and anti-submarine sweeps. On one occasion he made a most effective attack on an enemy submarine and after being joined in the operation by two other aircraft, the vessel was sunk. Flying Officer Loney has proved himslf first class captain of aircraft wha has invarably driven home his attacks with great determination.' Newspaper extract: 'How a Melbourne pilot sent a U-boat to the bottom after queuing up for the attack with two other Liberators was with the award of the DFC to Flying Officer Wesley Glen Loney, RAAF, 22 years old former clerk of Carnegie. The episode happened during a stirring occasion when Coastal Command Liberators and Royal Navy destroyers sank five and damaged three of twenty U-boats attacking convoys in the North Atlantic. Loney was flying 40 miles from the convoy when he sighted a U-boat which engaged the diving aircraft with heavy but inaccurate anti-aircraft fire. The U-boat's captain, who had apparently resolved to fight it out on the surface, managed to evade the depth-chargers of another Liberator. Then Loney's front-gunner cleared the submarine's decks with a deluge of half-inch machine gun bullets, but the bomb aimer's explosives just missed the U-boat, whose gunners resolutely remanned the pom-poms and four inch high angle gun. When the third Liberator appeared Loney had to queue up for his second attack. Loney watched his colleagues attack unsuccessfully from such a low altitude that explosions and spray almost obscured the aircraft, which bounded up 50 feet or more with the concussion. When the other Liberators had expended their depth-charges on the U-boat, which was still fighting back fiercely, everything depended on the success of the Australian's final attack. Loney came in from dead astern encountering flak so intense that the crew heard shrapnel tearing through the aircraft. The Liberator, whose wingspan is the greatest of all the Allies' fighting aircraft, passed only a few feet above the U-boat's conning-tower and the bomb aimer scored a dead centre bull's eye. The Liberator's tail gunner watched the U-boat's stern blown clean from the water. Then as the Liberator turned the whole crew clearly saw the submarine's bows jut into the air for a few seconds, enabling the co-pilot and beam gunner to secure photographic evidence of its death. The Liberator, which was hundreds of miles from shore, was dangerously situated. Shrapnel had punctured one petrol tank and burst a landing tyre. Loney reported the U-boat's destruction and safely landed his almost petrol-less aircraft at a British base. Loney is described in the citation as a 'first class captain of aircraft'. He subsequently damaged another U-boat after a gruelling surface battle.' Together with miniature medals, cloth wings, squadron blazer pocket patch, photographs,letters.