GRAHAM BLAKE – RAF – 1965*

Graham Blake joined the College in September 1944 from his home in Bristol and left in July 1949, having passed the Oxford School Certificate.

At the time of his death, he was stationed at RAF Colerne, Wiltshire. He was one of 41 people, including RAF and Army personnel and local instructors, on board a Handley Page Hastings undertaking a parachute training flight. According to eyewitnesses, the plane encountered difficulties soon after take-off and crashed into a barley field outside Little Baldon, Abingdon with no survivors. At this point in time (1965), this was the worst peacetime accident involving any passenger aircraft of the Royal Air Force.

Sergeant Blake left a wife and four children.

* Included on the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire