A Great Escape
Over the Easter period, the Museum was very pleased to find a RAF veteran with a very interesting past pay a visit. Warrant Officer Ralph Targett served as an Observer with No.221 Squadron in the Mediterranean, and in mid-1942 during a detachment to Malta came under the command of the legendary RAF reconnaissance pilot Adrian Warburton. Having survived being shot down once, it was in September 1942 that Ralph and the crew of his Wellington aircraft were shot down over the sea off Sicily and luckily were picked up albeit as prisoners of the Italians.
Imprisoned in Camp PG59 at Servigliano to the south of Ancona for about a year, it was after Italy surrendered in September 1943, that Ralph took his opportunity to escape. As one of the many Allied Prisoners of War who managed to flee from captivity, Ralph headed into the mountains to join up with Italian partisans that were resisting the occupying German troops. Some months later during 1944, Ralph managed to reach the advancing Allied forces and was subsequently returned home.
As is a Museum tradition, Ralph was kindly asked to sign the ‘Bomber Boys’ propeller blade, which he obligingly did. There is also a propeller blade in the Museum for ‘Fighter Boys’ to sign.
For anyone intending to visit the Museum and you have a relative who was a wartime RAF ‘flyer’, then do bring them along if at all possible to see the Museum and to sign the propeller blades.