Name: Alan Gillison Rank: Leading Airman Service Number: FX96222 Service: 836 Squadron, MV Adula, Fleet Air Arm Royal Navy Date of Birth: May 14, 1924 Place of Birth: Salford, Lancashire, England Date of Death: June 26, 1944 Age: 20 Memorial: Lee-On-Solent Memorial, England Reference: Bay 5, Panel 2 Alan was the son of Harold Gillison (1897-1937) and Doris (Hulme) Gillison (1897-1973), and the brother of Harold Roy Gillison (1920-1995). Following his enlistment with the Fleet Air Arm Royal Navy, Alan was selected for overseas training at No 1 Naval Air Gunner School, part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, at RCAF Station Yarmouth (East Camp) in Nova Scotia. He completed nine months of TAG training in Yarmouth with Course 45A (October 1943). Following his training, he was assigned as a Leading Airman to 836 Naval Air Squadron, the Fleet Air Arm unit responsible for providing anti-submarine air protection along the perilous Atlantic convoy routes. Officially, his service record and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission list his assignment as HMS Shrike, which was the naval shore establishment name for Royal Naval Air Station Maydown in Northern Ireland, used for administrative and payroll tracking. Operationally, however, Gillison served at sea as part of a small naval air detachment aboard the MV Adula. The Adula was an unconventional hybrid vessel, a commercial oil tanker fitted with a flight deck to operate as a Merchant Aircraft Carrier, or MAC ship, while still carrying vital fuel cargoes across the ocean under a civilian Merchant Navy captain. MV Adula was one of nine Royal Dutch/Shell oil tankers converted to become a Merchant Aircraft Carrier. The group is collectively known as the Rapana class. On June 26, 1944, while operating in the notoriously treacherous, fog-heavy waters off the coast of Newfoundland, the Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bomber he was manning, serial number HS439, crashed into the sea. The World War II Index of Allied Airmen Roll of Honour, 1939-1945, records the cause of the crash as, “tried to land in thick fog and crashed into the sea off Newfoundland, probably short of fuel.” The incident claimed the lives of all three crew members, including the pilot, Sub-Lieutenant John Sidney Harman, and the observer, Sub-Lieutenant David George Allen, both RNVR