LIEUTENANT ERNEST CONWAY LANSDALE, 11 SQUADRON ROYAL FLYING CORPS. KILLED IN ACTION, 30TH SEPTEMBER 1916, AGED 21.


LIEUTENANT ERNEST CONWAY LANSDALE, 11 SQUADRON ROYAL FLYING CORPS. KILLED IN ACTION, 30TH SEPTEMBER 1916, AGED 21.


At 09.10am on the morning of the 30th September, Lieutenant Ernest Conway Lansdale of 11 Squadron Royal Flying Corps, took off from the airfield at Izel-Les Hameau with his observer Albert Clarkson, flying in an FE2b biplane. Ernest and the rest of 11 Squadron were to provide fighter escort for bombers whose target was German support lines behind the town of Bapaume.



Ernest was new to 11 Squadron and had only qualified as a flying officer eleven days before, nevertheless, he was sent into combat with the far more experienced Clarkson who already had three kills to his name.


Climbing to about 9000 feet in clear blue skies the squadron rendezvoused with the bombers and continued towards Bapaume. At 10.45am and approaching the target the British planes came under attack from German machines and dog fights broke out between the fighter planes. Within minutes a German Albatros D.11 biplane closed on Ernest's plane from behind and began firing its machine gun. The fight would be brief and unequal for the German pilot was the greatest air ace of World War One, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the infamous 'Red Baron'. 


Von Richthofen describes how he fired about 200 rounds into Lansdale's plane before it began to descend into an uncontrolled spin. In the days before parachutes there was nothing that the pilot could do except hope to make some sort of controlled landing. Probably barely alive Lansdale was in no position to control anything and the plane crashed behind enemy lines. German soldiers dragged both flyers from their plane but Albert Clarkson was already dead and Ernest Lansdale would die soon after.


Ernest Lansdale was born in Goole, but his father, a provision merchant brought the family to Ilkley at the beginning of the century. Educated at Ilkley Grammar School he lived at 3 Hawthorn Villas on Grove Road. Before the war he was employed by his father’s company and at its outbreak was in Denmark. 


His father Ernest Esau Lansdale was a Major in the territorial Army Service Corps (27th Divisional Train) and was played a large part in recruiting local men in September 1914. His son Ernest received a commission in his father’s unit and was posted to France January 1916. Soon tiring of life behind the lines he transferred to the RFC in July 1916.


Ernest Lansdale is buried in Bancourt Communal Cemetery and remembered on Ilkley War Memorial and St Margaret’s Church. His grieving parents had a stained glass installed into the parish church of Goole which bore a photographic representation of his face.

                                                                   Albert Clarkson

                                             Ernest and Albert lie side by side at Bancourt

                                                Lansdale Window in Goole Parish Church

                                                                        Window detail



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