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| Click Here For Full Artist Print Indexes | Aviation History Archive |
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Aviation Art Prints  Pilot Signatures World War Two Signatures UK and Commonwealth H  Higginson, Taffy |
Wing Commander Taffy Higginson
| Wing Commander Taffy Higginson Frederick William Higginson was born into a Welsh-speaking family at Gorseinon, near Swansea, where his father was a policeman. He attended Gorseinon Grammar School until beginning his apprenticeship with the RAF. Enlisting in 1929 at the age of 16, Taffy Higginson served as a fitter and air gunner with No.7 Sqn until 1935, when he was accepted for flight training. After qualifying as a pilot, he initially flew with No.19 Sqn before transferring to No.56 Sqn on Hurricanes. By June 1941 he had tallied a score of 12 victories. On June 17th, 1941, he was shot down by anti-aircraft fire over Dunkirk while escorting bombers returning from an operation over Lille. With considerable height in hand, he was able to bale out safely and guide his parachute to land in a wood near a railway. Having a map, he established that he was about 12 miles northwest of Fauquembergues but he had lost one of his boots in ejecting from his Hurricane. Limping along, he was overtaken by two German soldiers on a motorcycle combination sent out to find him. His capture appeared certain but the abrupt appearance of a low-flying Luftwaffe aircraft distracted the soldier driving the motorcycle, enabling Higginson to wrench over the handlebars, crash the machine into a ditch and make off in the confusion. He hid in the wood until after dark and then made his way to a hut on the edge, where he sought assistance from the owner. Confident of his limited French, he ordered a glass of beer, paid for it with money provided by the French farmer and hitched a lift with a lorry driver who took him to a local garage whose owner had contacts with an escape line for British airmen. After a series of adventures, Higginson crossed into Vichy- controlled France and made contact with the MI9 escape line run by the Belgian doctor Albert-Marie Guérisse, alias 'Pat O'Leary'. While attempting to cross into Spain with an Australian escaped prisoner of war, he was stopped and arrested by Vichy French frontier guards and interned in Fort de la Revère near Nice. Thanks to the efforts of Guérisse, he escaped from there and was eventually taken off the French Mediterranean coast by a Polish-manned trawler operating out of Gibraltar under the auspices of the Special Operations Executive. He was landed at Greenock on October 5, 1942, and rejoined No 56 Squadron shortly afterwards. He was awarded the DFC in 1943. After the war he served with Headquarters 11 Group, attended the RAF Staff course at Bracknell and also graduated from the Army Staff College, Camberley. He resigned from the RAF in 1956 to join the Bristol aircraft manufacturers at Filton, where the company was developing the ground-to-air rocket-powered defensive system, Bloodhound. In 1963 he joined the board of Bristol and was appointed OBE for services to industry that year. Sadly Frederick William Higginson passed away on 12th February 2003, aged 89.
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| Wing Commander Taffy Higginson - Signed Aviation Art Prints, Paintings and Drawings |
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