orders, decorations, campaign medals and militaria - Spink

November 22, 2012 - LoNdoN
Warrant Officer W.H. Yates
continual operations during this period. The serviceability of the machine has been such that not once
has it failed to answer to requirements. This has been largely due to this airman. He has been involved
in 5 enemy actions and has displayed skill and efficiency. His devotion to his duties which not only
included those of an air gunner but also the maintenance of his aircraft has been outstanding particularly
when operating from advanced bases without the usual ground staff facilities.’
536375 Warrant Officer William Henry Yates, D.F.M., born 15.4.1917; enlisted in the Royal Air
Force, 24.11.1936; served during the Second World War with No.230 Squadron (Sunderlands), based
in Egypt, carrying out anti-submarine patrols over the Mediterranean; Operations stepped up with the
entry of Italy to the War, and Yates’s first direct contact with the enemy occurred when flying from
Malta to Alexandria, 15.9.1940: ‘Engaged Cant 506 fired 300 rounds’ (recipient’s Log Book refers);
Yates saw further action on the 12th October: ‘Bombed 4 M.T. Boats and sighted Italian Fleet’ (ibid),
before the Squadron’s role shifted to transporting freight and troops between Egypt and North Africa.
Between April and May 1941 Yates was involved in the evacuation of Greece, Yugoslavia, and Crete,
during which his Sunderland safely transported 138 passengers, including a number of V.I.P.s on the
German ‘Hit List’ that were evacuated from Kotor, Montenegro, 17.4.1941, the day the Yugoslav Royal
Army capitulated to the Germans.
Yates had further contact with the enemy on the 12th June: ‘Italian submarine machine gunned. 100
rounds front turret’ (ibid), before resuming passenger operations, including carrying the Air Officer
Commanding in Chief, Middle East Command, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder (later Marshal of the Royal
Air Force Lord Tedder, G.C.B.) from Cairo to Aboukir, 26.7.1941. Yates’s final flight was a patrol over
the Mediterranean, 1.8.1941- his Sunderland was shot down over the sea by an Italian submarine; eight
of his crew members were killed, while Yates and three others joined the Goldfish Club by making use
of their emergency dinghy, later to be picked up by the submarine and made Prisoners of War.
Incarcerated in the Sulmona camp, in the mountains approximately 60 miles east of Rome, Yates
succeeded in escaping in 1943, before being re-captured by the Germans and spending the rest of the
War in a German Prisoner of War camp (newspaper cutting refers).
Following the end of the War Yates left the Royal Air Force, 6.4.1946, and subsequently trained as a
civilian Aircraft Maintenance Engineer, based at Filton, Bristol. In October 1973 he returned to his old
Italian Prisoner of War camp at Sulmona, where he was presented with the Italian Prisoner of War Medal
for Merit by the Italian Ministry of Defence.
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