is
a daily summary
of events for RCAF Squadron 439 as recorded in the 439 Squadron Operations Record Books
(RAF Forms 540 and
541) for the years 1944 and 1945. Form 540 was used primarily to record
daily domestic and administrative happening such as transfers,
postings, promotions, deployments, charges, operational losses, and
other extraordinary events experienced by the Squadron. It provides
excellent background colour to the fairly statistically dry mission
summaries of the 541 which records mission type, aircraft tail
numbers and pilots involved , as well as hours flown, type of
armament used, mission results (successes or failures) and claims.
In
as much as possible this is a verbatim transcription of these documents,
the only editing being minor grammatical corrections such as sentence
structure and the inclusion of paragraphs to facilitate reading. One other
key change but unobtrusive change was to identify references to 439 as
"Squadron" vice "squadron".
This
Day in History is
an on going work so that not all of the diaries and summaries have been
entered yet and so keep coming back to check on the progress. Although
the material is readily available in archives in Ottawa, they are in a Photostat
as opposed to text format, and a fee is charged for each page
requisitioned. The pages attached to this segment represent thousands of
hours of personal effort, I won't charge a fee, but ask that you respect
the Terms of Use.
Clicking
on any Month / Day will launch two new windows focusing on
the events that occurred for that day in 1944 and
1945.
Tiger
Squadron