Biography – Sub Lieutenant Derek Tomlinson

Family situation

• Derek was born in 1924 and his family moved into Betley in about 1941 to the Old Post Office.
• Later they moved to the Old Vicarage in Church Lane.
• His father was MD of Wheatly Tileries in Stoke-on-Trent.
• He had two brothers and a sister.
• He attended Newcastle High School and then Wrekin College.
• He became engaged to Audrey Wood WRNS in 1944.

Service

After the Air Training Corps at Wrekin College he volunteered in 1942 for the ‘Y’ scheme in the Royal Navy and served locally in the Royal Observer Corps.

In 1943 he was called up as a naval airman and trained in Trinidad.

He was commissioned in 1943.

On 17^th November 1944 when stationed at Inskip in the Operational Training Unit, HMS Nightjar when piloting a Fairey Swordfish the plane crashed in a field and the crew was killed.

Buried

He is buried in the churchyard of St.Peter’s Inskip.