#1941

2 incidents tagged

Ken Farnes Killed in RAF Training Crash — Chipping Warden, October 1941

Essex / England (cricket); No.12 OTU, RAF Chipping Warden (military)

1941-10-20

On the night of 20 October 1941, the England Test fast bowler Pilot Officer Ken Farnes was killed when his Vickers Wellington bomber crashed shortly after take-off from RAF Chipping Warden in Oxfordshire on a night-flying training exercise. Farnes was 30, had taken 60 wickets in 15 Tests between 1934 and 1939, and had been one of the few amateurs in the country considered the equal of the leading Australian fast bowlers. His death, just 11 weeks before Hedley Verity was wounded in Sicily, was the first major loss of an active England Test cricketer in the Second World War.

#ken-farnes#wwii#essex

⭐Serious

Bradman Invalided Out — Fibrositis Ends His War, June 1941

Royal Australian Air Force / Australian Imperial Force (Bradman)

1941-06-30

Don Bradman, Australia's captain and the world's most famous cricketer, was invalided out of military service on 30 June 1941 with chronic fibrositis. He had enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in June 1940, transferred to the Army School of Physical Training at Frankston, and within months was so debilitated by muscular pain in his back and right arm that he could not shave himself or comb his hair. The discharge — barely reported at the time under wartime censorship — kept him out of cricket for almost five years and shaped the legend of his post-war return.

#bradman#raaf#aif