Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Billy Kent PURDY (1923 - ?)

Billy Kent PURDY was born and grew up in Sydney New South Wales, on 16 April 1923.

Like many men of his generation he was contemplating conscription as an 'eligible male' and to take matters into his own hands he enlisted in the Air Force on the 23 May, 1942. His enlistment and training journey began in Sydney then to  Point Cook, Victoria to the RAAF's No. 1 Service Flying Training School,  and eventually to England.  After additional training and crewing up with the men with whom he would go to war, he began flying the legendary Avro Lancaster in an RAAF unit, No. 463 Squadron part of the RAF's Bomber Command. 

The 'average' crew in Bomber Command didn’t make it past 5 missions. Bill completed 37, and “felt lucky after every trip”. The hardest part of each sortie for Bill was not the mission itself; rather, it was the hours before, where crew-members sat wondering whether or not they would be returning home that night. Before each mission, Bill would tidy his room and possessions so that, if he didn’t make it home successfully, his kit bag could be sent back to his family. On three seperate occasions, Bill’s Bomber was hit by anti-aircraft fire, yet he was never shot down and never had to bail out. To come back unscathed from 37 missions was something of a miracle. 

The most memorable mission for Bill was the bombing of Point du Hoc on D-Day (6th of June, 1944). Bill later described the battle as “the greatest armada in human history”. Bomber Command had to navigate treacherous conditions on the night of the bombing. Heavy cloud cover and rain meant visibility was extremely poor. Regardless, No. 463 Squadron and the other units involved, made certain that the German naval guns and concrete defensive structures were completely destroyed, dropping bomb after bomb in a relentless assault.  The damage is still evident today.

Unbeknown to everyone at the time was the fact that the the 155mm guns at Pont du Hoc had been pulled out by the Nazis, but the level of destruction was such that they would never be returned.

The British bombng offensive was responsible for the deaths of around 600,000 Germans, many of whom were civilians. For that reason, members of Bomber Command were not embraced by the public as much as other soldiers were, as they represented the darker side of the war.  However, when ti began, it was the only means the British, and later the Allies in general, had at their disposal to take the war to the enemy's hearth.

That needs to be balanced against the cost in aircrew losses which were by any measure, horrendous.   Bomber Command lost nearly 50% of its total strength during the course of the war.  Even in an Australian context, RAAF losses in Bomber Command were the single greatest cohort of losses in WW2.  In recent years however, the work of Bomber Command has come to be publicly recognised for “the tremendous force it was”. For Bill, his missions were a fight “for existence;” an unfortunate inevitable that Bomber Command had no control over. As Bill put it in 2014 in an interview with ABC News: “Any war is terrible business,…we didn’t bring that…upon ourselves”.

In March of 1945, Bill was sent back to Australia to serve in the Pacific against the Japanese. He was later transferred to the reserves in September as a Flight Lieutenant. In 1951, he was called up as a flight instructor, training pilots serving in the Korean War. He finished his instructing with a commercial pilots license. In 1952, Bill started a frozen food distribution company with a friend he had met during WWII. He sold the business to Gordon Edgell Ltd in 1959. In 1966, he joined Arnott’s Biscuits as Marketing Director, eventually becoming Chairman. He retired in 1995. 

Bill lead the Tiger Moth fly-past of Sydney Harbour on Anzac Day in 2014 at the age of 90; an incredible feat. To the best of my knowledge, as of June 2019, he still resides in Mosman, Sydney, and continues to fly light aircraft. 

Derived from a range of sources (see links)