Denis Parnall was a son of the founder of the Parnall Aircraft company. He studied at Clifton College, Bristol and went up to Downing College, Cambridge to read mechanical sciences. He was a member of the University Air Squadron, the Reserve of Air Force Officers and, later, the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. Eventually he took up a permanent commission in the RAF as a university entrant.
Flying Officer Demetriadi was shot down into the Channel on 11 August during the ‘Battle of Portland’. His body was washed ashore in France and he is buried at Cayeux-sur-Mer Communal Cemetery, north west of Abbeville.
Flight Lieutenant Parnall became operational at the end of May 1940 and had achieved a number of successes before his death on 18 September. During a patrol over Gravesend he was attacked and shot down, his Hurricane crashing across the Thames in Essex. It burned out by the A12, near Furness Farm, Furze Hill, Margaretting.
Helpless and at a distance, the shooting down of Denis Parnall was witnessed by his friend and squadron comrade, Pilot Officer John Beazley. Many years later, Wing Commander Beazley would be the long-serving treasurer, and then a Life Vice-President, of the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust.
The Demetriadi family home was in Wealden Sussex and it was close by, at Ditchling Beacon, that Sir Stephen donated to the National Trust the land that commemorates his son.
The Parnalls were Cornish in origin and the body of Denis Parnall was returned to the far west for burial in the churchyard of St Genesius at St. Gennys near the family home at Crackington Haven.
Denis’s brother Alan also served in the RAF. He seems to have been an Army Co-operation pilot in France in 1940 and later a staff officer. The brothers were close. It appears that they enjoyed returning to the family home and, so the online history of the Parnall business suggests, it was a habit to land aircraft on Penkenna Point.
Alan survived the war but died in 1967. Eight years earlier he had presented land at the unspoilt cove at Crackington Haven to the National Trust “in memory of his brother Flight Lieutenant Denis Parnall, RAF and all who gave their lives in the Battle of Britain 1940”.
Geoff Simpson. FRHistS
