The Association has learned of the death of Lt(A) David Ronald Barrell RNVR in September 2021.
From Records
David saw service between 1942 – 46
He joined as a Pilot from the ‘Y’ entry scheme and served in a wide range of TBR/Anti-submarine aircraft. He was mainly UK based including flying the Blackburn Firebrand with 813 Squadron.
He was de-mobbed in 1946 as an A/Lt(A) RNVR.
By kind permission of the Goldfish Club:
DAVID RONALD BARRELL lived in Reigate and died on the 6th September. David was a Midshipman pilot in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve based at RNAS ERROL in Perthshire in Scotland. On the 5th January 1944 he was tasked to fly a Fairey Swordfish on a torpedo dropping training sortie against a floating target in the mouth of the river Tay. He was approached in the Officer’s Mess by an RAF Officer who asked if he could come along for the ride. David felt pressured into agreeing, and so they set off in a Fairey Albacore – without even entering the name of David’s passenger in the authorisation sheets. As David ran in for his torpedo drop – at only three hundred feet – the engine failed and he elected to stall the aircraft into the sea, using the unprimed torpedo as ballast. David and his passenger got out of the aircraft, but in his haste, his senior RAF guest mistook his dinghy for his seat cushion, and the larger crew dinghy did not deploy from the upper wing as advertised, so both had to share David’s single seat dinghy, which just managed to keep both afloat in very cold sea water for an hour and a half, after which they were rescued by an RAF rescue launch which took them to Dundee and then back to ERROL. Once they got back to the Mess, David’s senior RAF passenger disappeared – perhaps embarrassed at his ‘cushion instead of a raft’ mistake – and David never did know what his name was!