Hero airman who helped sink Bismarck warship dies aged 93 | Mail Online - good pics at link. Kyt, your Eugene Esmonde book is signed by Mr Sayer.
One of the men who helped sink the Bismarck died this week. Les Sayer was the radio operator-gunner for Percy Gick, the Swordfish pilot whose torpedo slowed the German battleship. As the U.K. Daily Mail recounts, Sayer remembered staring down at the ocean after a shell splash from the battleship ripped the aircraft's fabric exterior. Sayer won the Distinguished Service Medal for his exploits during the Bismarck mission. After the war, he spent more than 30 years in civil aviation with various European airlines. Mr. Sayer was also one of the last survivors of 825 Squadron. Three members of the unit were lost on a subsequent sortie to locate the Bismarck, and thirteen others died nine months later, on a mission against two other German capital ships, the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen, during their famous dash up the English Channel. Among those lost on that day was Eugene Esmonde, the resourceful commander who found the Bismarck on the May evening, in the gathering darkness of the North Atlantic.
Daily Express | UK News :: Hero who crippled the Bismarck dies aged 93 - some comments from his widow.
It would be interesting to know what he did after the Bismarck action. Where was he when the Channel Dash occurred?
