BAGGULEY RB
Robert Beck BAGGULEY
Died 9 March 1943 Age 29
Remembered Runnymede Memorial Panel 118
NAME Robert Beck BAGGULEY
Service Record
Squadron Leader 44775 Royal Air Force 139 Bomber Command Awarded Distinguished Flying Cross. He became a flight Sergeant on 23 October 1940
Lost without trace during a bombing raid on the Renault factory at Le Mans.
Son of Robert Nicholson and Mary Ellen Bagguley and husband of Brenda Bagguley nee Andrews of Herne Bay, Kent who he married in April 1938 in Daventry
1911 Census shows Robert and Mary living in North Road, Carnforth with their children Walter (11), Willie (9), Bessie (7), Mary (1).
The 1921 census shows they are living at King Street, Carnforth with Walter and his wife Georgina, William (Willie), Bessie, Mary, Robert (6) George (1) and their grandaughter Joan who had been born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire.
Robert Bagguley was educated at Carnforth C of E school and Lancaster Technical College, from where he joined the RAF aged 16. In 1938 he married Brenda Andrews in Daventry, Northamptonshire.
At the start of the war 139 Sqdn had been equipped with Bristol Blenheims, which were lost when the French airfield where the Squadron was based was overrun by the advancing German Army in June 1940. Following re-equipment with Lockheed Hudsons, 139 Squadron was sent to Burma. In June 1942 the Squadron returned to Britain and was stationed at RAF Horsham St Faith (now Norwich airport). In September of the same year it was re-equipped with Mosquito fighter-bombers. Robert was now the pilot of Mosquito DZ469, and flew with navigator, Flight Lieutenant, Charles Kenneth Hayden.
One of 139 Squadron’s most celebrated actions was the raid on the heavily defended molybdenum mine at Knaben in Norway in 1943. This involved a low-level flight along a fjord, using the Mosquito’s speed and agility to evade the anti aircraft guns based around the site. This raid severely disrupted Germany’s molybdenum supplies, thus hampering its production of hardened steel, which requires molybdenum.
According to the Squadron diary, at 17.10 on 9 March 1943, ten Mosquitos took off to raid the Renault factory at Le Mans. By 21.05 only nine had returned and DZ469 was listed as missing. According to Luftwaffe records, DZ469 had been shot down over the English Channel some 40km north of Bayeux by Leutnant Karl von Lieres und Wilkau of JG27, who himself was killed in action three months later.
The bodies of Bagguley and Hayden were never recovered. On the 27 March Robert Bagguley was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, for his actions during the Knaben raid.
The data is the editor's interpretation of documents from:
The National Archive
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Find My Past
Everyone Remembered
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