The son of Arthur and Bertha, Eric Chadwick was born in the summer of 1920. Arthur was a manager of the shop on Howard Street at Walkley of Arthur Davey & Son, who were provision merchants,
In 1911 Arthur, Bertha and their daughter, Agnes, were living on City Road. They continued to live there until about 1925 when they moved onto Brookhouse Hill.
Eric attended Nether Green School before moving to High Storrs in 1932.
We don’t know what occupation he had after he left school, probably in 1936.
Eric joined the RAFVR soon after war was declared. He is mentioned in a report written in February 1942. The report details a sortie to lay mines off the Wangerooge Island, the easternmost of the East Friesian Islands. East of Wangerooge Island, are the approaches to Willhelmshaven which was, and is, an important and largest base for the German Navy. This type of sortie was codenamed ‘gardening’ and the mine to be dropped known as a vegetable.
Sergeant Eric Chadwick was the radio operator but also had a role as an Air Gunner. According to the report the aircraft, piloted by Pilot Officer Adams took off just before midday from their base at RAF North Luffenham (the village of North Luffenham is near Rutland Water). As they flew past Langeroog Island, Sergeant Morris, the rear gunner, sighted an enemy aircraft approaching. Adams immediately took evasive action climbing into cloud cover. There is a different version of the event in the Squadron’s log – no mention is made of the enemy aircraft approaching but they did see another Hampden ‘shot up by fighter’ so ‘climbed steeply into the cloud.’
By 1943, the Squadron had transferred from Bomber Command to Coastal Command. This move was prompted by a failure on the part of the RAF to prevent the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen sailing from France through the English Channel to Germany. The Squadron’s new role was to attack shipping with torpedoes and it relocated to the north east coast of Scotland. The Squadron converted to the Bristol Beaufighter at the start of the year.
1943 was the year that Eric Chadwick was commissioned as a Pilot Officer.
On Thursday 26th April 1945, Chadwick who had been promoted to Flying Officer, was the pilot of one of 28 Beaufighters that took off from RAF Dallachy, near Elgin. In the plane with him was F/O Denis Arthur Forrester. The Beaufighters were escorted by mustangs and other airplanes. Their objective was to seek out and destroy any ships hiding in Fedefjord some 80 Km north of Bergan in Norway.
The photograph was taken during the this sortie. It was the last anti-shipping attack carried out by the squadron based at Dallachy on a convoy lying in Fedefjord prior to the surrender of Germany. Four Bristol Beaufighter TF Mark Xs can be seen firing on shipping moored close to the cliffs, and anti-aircraft defences on the shore and surrounding hills. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205023374
Copyright: © IWM.
Chadwick and his navigator F/O Forrester came under attack as they approached their target. Attempting to avoid a ‘parachute and cable rocket’, Chadwick’s action caused the plane to stall and it crashed in to the waters of the Fjord.
Flying Officer Eric Chadwick is commemorated on the RAF Memorial at Runnymede, along with