On Sunday 1st August 2021 a memorial plaque dedicated to Pilot Officers Barney Jobling and Fred Weston of 157 Squadron RAF was unveiled at Olives Farm, Hunsdon, by their sons of the same name.
It was here on the afternoon of 31st August 1943 that their Mosquito NF.II DZ739 crashed while performing a night flying test from RAF Hunsdon. After waggling his wings when flying over the Officers’ Mess at Bonningtons for the benefit of his visiting wife Eileen, P/O Jobling took the aircraft into a climbing turn when it lost power and stalled. DZ739 fell to the ground killing both him and his navigator and friend P/O Weston.
Both wives of the crew were pregnant at the time of the crash. Eileen went to stay with Fred’s wife Dilys in Wales where son Barney was born. Dilys had given birth to son Fred shortly after the loss of her husband. It was at the unveiling of the Roll of Honour memorial in 2012 that sons Barney and Fred met for the first time.
