Hawker Typhoon pilot during the Second World War
Born: March 23, 1921;
Died: August 2, 2017
FLT/LT DAVID INCE, who has died aged 96, was a Glaswegian who saw service through much of the Second World War with the RAF. He was desperate to join the RAF and, despite failing the initial medical examination on three occasions, he was involved in over 150 sorties and was awarded the DFC.
David Henry Gason Ince came from a distinguished military family – his father, a director of an explosives firm in Glasgow, had been awarded the MC in the First World War. Flt/Lt Ince attended Kelvinside Academy and Cheltenham College and his early interest in flying was rewarded when a member of the Renfrew Flying Club took him up for spins in a Gipsy Moth. He joined Glasgow No 602 Auxiliary Squadron, one of the longest-established units in the RAF Reserves.
After an 18-month course with the army, Flt/Lt Ince was seconded to the RAF as a gunner and then trained as a pilot in Canada. He returned and joined 257 Squadron to fly Typhoons and was soon acknowledged for his skilful aerial photography and his ability to take low level photographs of strategically important targets.
He also played a leading role in the trials and early operational use of napalm. He dropped napalm bombs at Arnhem in April 1945 which harried the Germans and devastated their lines of communication.
Throughout those final months of the war, Flt/Lt Ince was instructed to photograph many important enemy locations – notably the Gestapo headquarters in Rotterdam after a severe RAF raid. He flew in very low and his plane was badly damaged. Flt/Lt Ince crept back to RAF Conningsby with oil pouring over the canopy and into the cockpit.
One expedition was more controversial. In no way was he or his colleagues to blame. Flt/Lt Ince was involved in a tragic raid off the coast of Norway. The Typhoon squadrons were ordered to sink the boats in Lubek Bay which, after comprehensive reconnaissance, were thought to be carrying escaping SS officers. In fact, the boats were also transporting Jewish survivors of the concentration camps.
Flt/Lt Ince wrote in his memoirs (Brotherhood of the Skies): "If you are in war, then these things happen. You try yourself to stop them happening. But it is the penalty of going to war, part of the downside, and part of the evil. Try as you will, you cannot stop it.”
On being demobbed, Flt/Lt Ince completed his engineering degree but chronic sinusitis prevented him from continuing as a test pilot. Instead in 1947 he moved to Suffolk, took up gliding and was a keen angler. He worked for Elliotts who supplied technological equipment to jet fighters and Concorde.
In 2008 he was chairman of the Typhoon Entente Cordiale Group that returned to Conningsby. He spoke in the Officers Mess on the Typhoon operations during the Second World War.
In 1954 Flt/Lt Ince married Anne Burton who had worked at Bletchley Park during the war. She died in 1993 and he is survived by their two daughters.
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