Paterson Clarence Hughes
Paterson Clarence Hughes, DFC, was an Australian fighter ace of World War II. He was credited with as many as seventeen aerial victories during the Battle of Britain, before being killed in action on 7 September 1940. His tally made him the highest-scoring Australian of the battle, and among the three highest- scoring Australians of the war. Posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and was buried in England.
About Paterson Clarence Hughes in brief
Paterson Clarence Hughes, DFC, was an Australian fighter ace of World War II. He was credited with as many as seventeen aerial victories during the Battle of Britain, before being killed in action on 7 September 1940. His tally made him the highest-scoring Australian of the battle, and among the three highest- scoring Australians of the war. Hughes is generally thought to have died after his Spitfire was struck by flying debris from a German bomber that he had just shot down. Posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and was buried in England. Hughes’ father was a teacher by profession but at the time of Pat’s birth was running the community post office; christened Percy, he had apparently adopted the name Paterson by the time he married Catherine Vennell in 1895. Hughes was educated at Cooma Public School until the age of twelve, when the family moved to Haberfield in Sydney. As well as playing sport, he was a keen aircraft modeller and built crystal radio sets. Hughes joined the Royal Australian Air Force as a cadet in 1936. After graduating as a pilot, he chose to take a commission with the RAF. In July 1937 he was assigned to No. 64 Squadron, which operated Hawker Demon and, later, Bristol Blenheim fighters. He shared in his unit’s first aerial victory on 8 July 1940, and began scoring heavily against the Luftwaffe the following month.
In May 1938 he was promoted to flying officer, and transferred to RAF Fenton, Yorkshire, where he was transferred to No 64 Squadron in May 1938. Like some of his compatriots, he refused to exchange his dark-blue RAAF uniform for the lighter-coloured RAF one. He died in a plane crash in September 1940, aged 48, and is buried in Fenton on the Isle of Wight. He is survived by his wife, two children and a step-granddaughter, who was born in Cooma, New South Wales, and a son and daughter-in-law, both of whom are now living in the United States. His widow, who is also a former RAF officer, died in 2005, aged 89. She was buried at St Paul’s Cemetery in London, where she is buried with her husband. Hughes had also applied to, and been accepted by, the. Royal Australian Navy, but chose the RAAF, and sailed for the United Kingdom in January 1937. He learnt to fly in de Havilland Moths before progressing to Westland Wapitis in the middle of the year. His euphoria during his first solo on 11 March 1936 was such that he ‘went mad, whistled, sang and almost jumped for joy’. He also grew to love the landscape of the local Monaro district in the shadow of the Snowy Mountains, which he described as ‘unrivalled in the magnificence of its beauty’
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This page is based on the article Paterson Clarence Hughes published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
