Flying Officer, RAF
Born: July 6th 1916
Died: June 22nd 1941
Age at Death: 24
Killed, June 22, 1941
Medals / honours: Distinguished Flying Cross
John Humpherson, son of Sidney Humpherson and his wife Lilian (née King), was born in Enfield, Middlesex, on 6 July 1916. At the College he kept busy turning his hand to various minor parts in a 1933 production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers.
Two years after leaving the College in 1934, he joined the RAF on a Short Service Commission. He had a quiet war in the months between September 1939 and May 1940, but then his air victories came thick and fast. By September 1940 he was a genuine air ace, claiming seven ‘kills’ of enemy aircraft, including three highly dangerous Me109 fighters, plus three of the enemy damaged, both in the Battle for France and the Battle of Britain. On 30 August 1940 he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
On 22 June 1941 a Flying Fortress belonging to 90 Squadron, with Humpherson and other crew members on board, took off from RAF West Raynham, Norfolk. The purpose of the flight was physiological research into flights at high altitude. At just above 30,000 feet, the aircraft entered a large thundercloud. The temperature in the aircraft dropped by some 20 degrees, and pieces of ice began to enter through the open rear gun ports. The plane entered a steep dive, and fell apart near Catterick in Yorkshire, close to where Henry Vale had died in a road accident seven months earlier. None of the airmen and only one of the medical officers was able to exit the plane. Humpherson is buried in St Paul’s Churchyard, Heslington, North Yorkshire.