Why has it taken so long? Having joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in August 1939, Thomson completed his training at an Operational Training Unit, making him rather more qualified than some of his colleagues, and joined No 616 Squadron at Kirton-in-Lindsey on 6 October 1940, to fly Spitfires.
In a sense he was unlucky. Squadron personnel in 1940 had more important things to do than push a pen in the assiduous recording of squadron life. In this regard 616 was possibly less assiduous than most. No operational sortie by Thomson was recorded in the operations record book during the rest of October. Thomson therefore hovered on the fringes of the Few without being a member.
In the third edition of Men of the Battle of Britain in 2015 Ken Wynn included a number of ‘possibles’ including Thomson. To avoid confusion, their mini-biographies appeared in italic.
Now Ronald Thomson’s logbook has come to light. In studying it, Mark Hillier noted that, on 20 October, Thomson recorded that he had been scrambled to deal with an X-raid, a report of an unidentified aircraft.
In the case of the previous man elevated to the Few, Sergeant J E W Ballard, an X-raid investigation had been deemed all that was needed, and so it proved with Thomson. If there is ever another edition of Men of the Battle of Britain, Sergeant Thomson will not be in italic. Now comes the work of researching his RAF service and his wider life, and obtaining a photograph, so that this Battle of Britain pilot may take his proper place in the history of the Battle.
Geoff Simpson FRHistS
