Name: ‘Joseph’ Thomas Patrick Culbert Rank: Radio Officer Service Number: Civilian Service: Ferry Command, Royal Air Force Date of Birth: March 17, 1910 Place of Birth: Liverpool, Merseyside, England Address at Enlistment: l’Île Bigras, Laval, Quebec Occupation: Wireless Operator Marital Status: Single (at enlistment), married in June 1941 Next of Kin: Doris Elizabeth Culbert (Wife) Date of Death: August 14, 1941 Age: 31 Cemetery: Ayr Cemetery, South Ayrshire, Scotland Grave: Section R, 1931 Div. Coll. grave 2750-2763 ‘Joseph’ Thomas Patrick Culbert was the son of Joseph Patrick Culbert (1867-1914) and Mary J (Gibbons) Culbert (1872-1944), and the husband of Doris Elizabeth (Dimock) Culbert (1916-1968) of Halifax, Nova Scotia, whom he married on June 9, 1941, in Quebec. His father was born in Dublin, Ireland, and his mother, in Liverpool, England. Joseph’s siblings were Joseph Patrick Culbert (1896-1897), Josephine Colbert (1897-1974), Robert Patrick Culbert (b. 1902), Mary Jane Culbert (1903-1904), Norah Kathleen Colbert (1904-1998), Maria Frances Culbert (1908-1982), unnamed child (1913-1913), and Margaret Mary Culbert (1913-2003). Joseph’s baptism at St Mary's in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, from March 27, 1910, records his name in Latin as Thoma Patritius ‘Colbert’, and his civil birth registration records his name as Thomas Patrick Culbert. His marriage record in Quebec records his name as ‘Thomas Culbert.’ Joseph’s wife Doris was born February 6, 1916, in Halifax, the son of Percy Woodworth Dimock (1882-1940) and Florence Mary (Gray) Dimock. After Joseph’s death in 1941, Doris married Charles Appleyard (1919- 2000) in 1948; a United States Army Air Force World War II Veteran who enlisted October 8, 1941 (Service No. 11032105) and served with the USAAF until December 3, 1945. Doris died in Newton, Middlesex Co., Massachusetts in 1968. At his birth, the family lived at 6 Hewitts Place in Liverpool when Joseph was born and the year later in 1911. Joseph’s father died in 1914, and although the family was still living in Liverpool in 1921, but at 13 Forthill Road in Kirkdale, Liverpool, by the 1930’s, he was living in Canada. He immigrated from Liverpool aboard the Montcalm arriving in Quebec on October 20, 1928. His mother, and sisters Mary and Margaret immigrated at the same time. His older sister Josephine was already living in Canada. Joseph worked as a wireless operator, as early as 1933, for years before he joined the Royal Air Force’s Ferry Command as a Civilian Radio Officer during the Second World War. Joseph was awarded a commercial certificate of proficiency in radio by the Radio Division of the Transport Department in Ottawa; announced May 5, 1937 (Montreal Gazette, Quebec, May 6, 1937). The exact date when Joseph volunteered to serve with Ferry Command is unknown. However, as an experienced wireless operator, his skills would have been in high demand. Ferry Command relied heavily on civilian specialists to support its transatlantic operations, and radio officers played a crucial role in maintaining communication during long and often perilous flights to deliver aircraft across the Atlantic. Joseph was killed when Ferry Command Consolidated LB-30A Liberator aircraft AM260 crashed on August 14, 1941, during a night takeoff on a return ferry flight from RAF Heathfield Aerodrome in Ayr, Scotland to Dorval, Quebec. AM260 veered off the runway across the grass and past the control tower, struck a small building and then an embankment. It then plunged over the embankment to the railway line, where it burst into flames. All 22 people on board were killed, including crew and passengers. The passengers were primarily other Civilian Radio Officers, Navigators or Pilots with Ferry Command aboard the flight to return to Canada. There was also a Canadian civilian passenger and Montreal resident Sir Arthur Blaikie Purvis Sr., who was Head of the British Purchasing Commission. This crash, along with another involving Liberator, AM261, just days earlier on August 10, 1941, dealt a blow to Ferry Command’s operations and morale. Some historians suggest these events may have influenced the wartime film Captains of the Clouds, which dramatized the lives of Ferry Command pilots. Two other casualties of flight AM260 had ties to Nova Scotia. Radio Officer Richard Coates, resident of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and Radio Officer John Joseph MacDonald, born in Sydney, Cape Breton, also served as a Civilian Radio Officers. Information on the other casualties aboard the aircraft are detailed it Richard Coates’ story. Radio Officers Culbert, Coates and MacDonald were all interred in a collective grave with the other crash casualties at the Ayr Cemetery in Ayrshire, Scotland.

Sources: Commonwealth War Graves Commission findagrave