John Kerry

Stirling III EH933 took off 27/1/44 from 1660 HCU at Swinderby for a night cross country training flight. At high altitude, just inland from the south coast of Devon, the aircraft suddenly broke up and fell from the sky. Most of it crashed into a hillside six miles north of Exton only six miles SSE of Exeter. Debris was recovered from a path stretching three and a half miles eastwards from the main impact. Eight men died in the disaster: John Kerry, Ben Ackroyd, Herbert Hewitt, Thomas Henry Jones, Ronald Anthony Partridge, Richard Street, Alfred Thursby and Claude Vernon Tomkinson.

John had two brothers, both killed during WW2. Richard Kerry was also an air gunner, who died when his Stirling crashed on an operation over Germany in August 1942 (not with 214 Squadron). Joseph Kerry was killed in action with the Royal Artillery in Italy in December 1944.