Unknown no more

A member of the Few who was buried as an “unknown” airman after being shot down and killed during the Battle of Britain has been properly remembered 85 years later at a ceremony in Bergen op Zoom, in the Netherlands.

Flying Officer Philip Anthony Neville Cox now has a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstone following detective work by Dutch researcher Philip Reinders, the commission and other agencies.

Born in Patcham, near Brighton, on 21 July 1915, F/O Cox was a prize-winning cadet at RAF College Cranwell and was posted in July 1937 to No 43 Squadron at Tangmere. He later served as an instructor and after further training in air tactics was posted to France in June 1940, where he joined No 501 Squadron as a flight commander.

The squadron left Dinard on 18 June and began operating from Jersey the next day, covering the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Cherbourg.

With the Squadron moved back to Croydon on 21 June, ‘Phil’ or ‘PAN’ Cox claimed a Messerschmitt Bf 109 destroyed, and shared in the destruction of another, on 20 July. He was shot down in Hurricane P3808 over Dover Harbour on the 27th by Lt. Horst Marx and reported missing. He was 25 years old.

F/O Cox’s name is recorded on the Runnymede Memorial, one of a number of memorials around the world which honour airmen and women from across the British Empire who were lost in World War Two and have no known grave, but that situation has now been changed, thanks to new research.

That research revealed that a body that was washed ashore at Westenschouwen in Zeeland, in the Netherlands, a month later and buried as an “unknown” British Air Force Officer, was actually F/O Cox, allowing him to be given a new headstone. It was dedicated by Squadron Leader Rev Jonathan Stewart RAF, the Station Chaplain at RAF Odiham.

L to R; WO N Rudge, 501 Sqn, RAuxAF, Captain S Edwards, RM (Assistant Military Attache British Embassy), Air Specialist 1 Marcus Gatenby, Band of the RAF Regiment and Rev. J Stewart, RAF, Station Chaplin RAF Odiham.