254 Squadron

Flight Lieutenant Cyril Hurst

In 1975 my ex-pilot, E.A.(Paddy) Mills who had emigrated to Canada, was in a shop in Toronto where he found a Matchbox model aircraft kit with a Beaufighter on the front with the letters QMM.  He bought a kit and was surprised to find that it was a Torbeau No RD439 on a strike in the Kiel area on 3rd May 1945.  He checked his logbook and found that he, F/O Mills, was the pilot and myself, F/O C.A.(Dick) Hurst, as navigator.  He contacted Lesney Products who made the kits and they informed him that the picture was created from a photograph supplied by the War Museum.  They had made an original painting and added a torpedo which we were not carrying on the strike. He was presented with a framed picture by Lesney Products and he sent me a kit to make up.  I checked in my own logbook which confirms that I was the navigator on that particular strike.   In 1991 I commissioned an artist, R. Macintosh, to produce an oil painting from the information I gave him and a black and white picture of a similar 254 Squadron Beaufighter.  The painting is 40cm by 50cm and hangs in the Hall of my house together with the Squadron crest which I have had since I was with the squadron.   Thank you for your recent e-mail telling us a little about your self including living on (near ed.) Thorney Island.  By coincidence the Squadron was stationed there in July 1946 and as the airfield had its own sailing club and moorings I had my first taste of sailing there.  I was demobbed from the RAF there a couple of months later so it was my last posting.

Ernie Mills and myself completed our RAF service as Flight Lieutenants and went our separate ways.  Ernie left the Squadron early in 1946 and became an instructor in air to air and air to ground fighting on Mosquitos.  Ernie came from Londonderry, N. Ireland where he was training to be a pharmacist but he emigrated to Canada to teach, married a Canadian girl and ended up as a Bank manager in Toronto.  He was far more interested in flying than I was and he formed a Chapter at an airfield near Toronto whose members had built their own aeroplanes.  Ernie built a single-seater monoplane in his garage over a period of 5 years from a kit powered by a Volkswagon engine.  In 1977 Betty and I were entertained by the pilots at their annual corn roast and I was co-erced to fly in a couple of their planes of WW1 vintage design.

Flt. Lt Hurst's Log Book