Wartime Heritage
ASSOCIATION
Remembering World War II
James Meldrum Watt
Royal Canadian Air Force
James Meldrum Watt
Sergeant
R/222387
101 RAF Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force
October 18, 1925
Banff, Alberta
April 29, 1943
RCAF Recruiting Centre, Calgary, AB
Banff, Alberta
17
5 feet, 10½ inches
Medium
Brown
Blue
Single
Bell Boy
Presbyterian
James Watt (Father)
September 13, 1944
18
Dumbarton Cemetery, Dunbartonshire, Scotland,
Section G, Extension 5, Bank 22, Grave 158
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James ‘Jim’ Meldrum Watt was the son of James Melles Watt (1884-1959) and Margaret Edith (Garner) Watt (1890-1927), and the
brother of Robert John "Steam" Watt (b. 1914), Hattie Mary Watt (1917-1927), James Watt (d. 1913), Jean Watt, and Edith Watt. His
father was born in Perth, Scotland, and his mother, in Manchester, England.
James attended primary school in Banff from 1931-1942, and high school in 1942-43. He enjoyed shooting, skiing, and boating. He
had worked as a delivery boy and car washer for different employers, and as a bell boy and hotel clerk for D. M. Soole at the
Homestead Hotel in Banff prior to enlisting in the RCAF.
After enlisting in April of 1943, and completing his initial induction training, James was assigned to the No. 4 Wireless school in
Guelph, Ontario from June 28 to August 12, 1943, the No. 1 SFTS at Camp Borden, Ontario from August 13 to September 17, 1943,
the No. 10 Bombing & Gunnery School at Mount Pleasant in Prince Edward Island from September 18 to January 14, 1944, and the No.
4 Aircrew Graduate Training School in Valleyfield, Quebec from January 19 to February 11, 1944.
Having his completed his training in Canada, James embarked in Halifax on March 5, 1944, and arrived in the United Kingdom March
14th.
From April 11 to June 30, 1944, he flew with the No. 83 Operational Training Unit (83 OTU), before transferring to the Royal Air
Force’s 101 Squadron on August 31, 1944.
Sergeant James Meldrum Watt was serving Air Gunner aboard the Lancaster III aircraft PB 456 when it crashed three miles east of the
village of Drymen near Dumbarton while carrying out a cross-country night training flight. All seven crew members were killed.
A funeral was held on September 20, 1944, at the Dumbarton Cemetery, where James is interred in Dunbartonshire, in Scotland, in
the United Kingdom.
“In letters home he was most enthusiastic about a leave he spent in Scotland, and he was counting the days until his next furlough,
when he planned to return to the Dumbartin district. It is most fitting that he should permanently rest there, in the land of his
forbears, which he had learned to love, on the banks of the Clyde, where ships plying between Canada and the Port of Glasgow,
pass close by.” (from the Crag & Canyon Newspaper, Banff, Alberta, September 22, 1944)
