Flight Lieutenant, RAF
Born: 24 September 1918
Died: 29 July 1942
Age at Death: 23
Douglas Whiteman was born on 24 September 1918 in Cawnpore, Bengal, in India, and was the only child of Alice Whiteman (née Smith), daughter of a soldier, and William Whiteman, a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery.
By 1932 his family had returned to London, and in that year Whiteman joined Bristol House. After his death his parents wrote to the Head Master declaring ‘how proud he was of being an Old Brightonian’.
Whiteman joined the RAF in January 1939. He spent almost three years in Egypt prior to serving in Europe, where he piloted a Stirling bomber as part of 7 Squadron. On 29 July 1942 Whiteman took part in an RAF air raid on Hamburg, but was shot down. He met a heroic end. Three crew members from his aircraft who bailed out and survived to become prisoners of war wrote to his parents explaining that after the plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, Whiteman, who commanded the plane, gave orders for them to bail out. Whiteman and the navigator remained in the aircraft to try to get the badly wounded wireless operator out, but they did not make it before it crashed. It was a double tragedy as he was due to come home the next day to marry, though we do not know his fiancée’s name.
It took two years for his family to learn for sure that he had been killed, but in September 1944 his parents wrote to the school saying that after hoping that he had been taken prisoner along with his comrades, they had finally been informed the previous month that he was officially deemed dead. Whiteman is buried in Becklingen War Cemetery.