By January 1940, 500 (County of Kent) Squadron had been at its wartime base at Detling, near Maidstone in Kent, for several months. Equipped with the Avro Anson Mk.I as part of Coastal Command’s Order of Battle, the unit’s roles were reconnaissance, light bombing, and escorting Channel convoys. Led by Sqn Ldr William LeMay and the motto ‘Whither the fates may call’, he was to see 500 through one of its most difficult periods – especially when it came to the vulnerability of the faithful ‘Annie’. Its basic armament of two .303 machine guns (one nose mounted and the other placed in a dorsal fitted, Armstrong Whitworth-built manually operated gun turret) worried him so much that he and the squadron armament officer, Fg Off Harold Jones, devised the idea of adding two more guns which would fire through the glazed side windows. They would be needed in the days ahead, for 500 was about to enter a period of intense flying in support of Operation Dynamo – the rescue of thousands of troops from the beaches at Dunkirk in northern France.
The drama was just beginning when, on May 15, Anson N5356/MK-B got airborne from Detling in the hands of Sqn Ldr Paine to carry out a Channel patrol. Leaving early that morning, part of the crew’s tas…
