Frank was the crew's first pilot. He was replaced by Joe Watson in January 1945. Keith's letters reveal very little about Frank, except that he had a pretty young wife who probably saved his life by convincing him not to fly.
Letter from Keith to his mom, October 21 1944.
'Our
skipper [Frank] got a telegram three days ago & his wife in Shrewsbury had a miscarriage so
he got compassionate leave to go & see her, she is in a pretty bad way & he
seemed awful worried, I hope she is O.K. cause she's awful nice & is very
young. '
Letter from Keith to his mom, 22 November 1944.
'Well
here I am again, I am still at con [conversion] unit and we still haven’t started to fly, we
were supposed to start this morning but our skipper [Frank]went to London to try &
get his wife home to Canada so naturally we couldn’t fly without a skipper. '
Letter from Keith to his mom, 30 December 1944.
'we
have had a lot of trouble again as I am back at Dalton again looking for
another skipper which means that we will have to start all over again at
conversion wait, I guess you can imagine how browned off we are getting. The
reason we are getting a new pilot is because the last one [Frank] turned out to be a
little yellow & although he was a very good pilot he wasn’t much good when
things started getting tough, so I guess we are better off without him.'
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