Bowes, Frederick Leigh (Squadron Leader, b.1915 - d.2009)

Collection relating to the Second World War service of 402846 Squadron Leader Frederick Leigh Bowes, No. 453 Squadron RAF, No. 76 Squadron RAAF, 1940-1945.

The collection includes Bowes' flying logbook and a diary he maintained from July 1941 to March 1942 and resumed again from March to December 1944, periods that coincided with his operational tours in the Pacific. Bowes, as a 25-year-old clerk, had enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1940 and was accepted for pilot training. At No. 2 Service Flight Training School in early 1941 Bowes' flight instructor was Pilot Officer William "Bill" Newton, a talented pilot who was to be posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for a series of dangerous and devastating bombing raids on Japanese targets in New Guinea in 1943. Bowes' logbook includes a pasted in copy of Newton's Victoria Cross citation.

Bowes completed advanced fighter training prior to being posted in August 1941 to No. 453 Squadron RAF, a unit raised under the Empire Air Training Scheme and then based at RAF Sembawang in Singapore. Bowes flew in the defence of Malaya and Singapore as the Japanese advanced southward from December 1942. Bowes' logbook records his probable destruction of two Japanese aircraft and the damage he inflicted on a third during this period. In his diary, Bowes depicts a tense period of operations and frequent Japanese air raids. He also records the sinking of HM Ships Repulse and Prince of Wales in December 1941.

Bowes' squadron was withdrawn to Java only days before Singapore fell to the Japanese. He returned to Australia in March 1942 and, from November, spent sixteen months as a flight training instructor. He returned to operations (and recommenced writing in his diary) with a posting to No. 76 Squadron RAAF in support of Allied operations around New Guinea from March 1944. His diary records operations, sickness, quiet periods and downtime, the loss of other airmen, and of when he assumes command of the squadron from May 1944. He flew 47 operational sorties with No. 76 Squadron by the end of his tour in December 1944. Bowes spent the remainder of the war in staff positions and was discharged from the RAAF in September 1945.

The collection also includes ten letters of reference written in support of Bowes by various persons between 1930 and 1946, as well as two volumes of printed manuscripts compiled by Bowes' son, Peter, and published in 2013. The volumes are well illustrated and include transcriptions from Bowes' wartime diary as well as itemised details taken from his flying logbook.