Name
Thomas Leon Mincher
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
05/12/1942
20
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Sergeant
1392462
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
MALTA MEMORIAL
Panel 4, Column 1.
Malta
Headstone Inscription
NA
UK & Other Memorials
Tilehouse St. Baptist Church Memorial, Hitchin, Hitchin Boys’ Grammar School Memorial (WW2)
Biography
When he first went to the Hitchin Grammar School, he was a ‘train boy’ living in Welwyn but later the family moved to Langbridge Close in Hitchin. He stayed at the Grammar School from 1933 to 1939 and achieved success in athletics. He was a member of a pre-war ‘twinning’ party with a German Rhineland School. After taking his School Certificate, he joined the Ministry of Pensions in London and in mid-1939 had recently started at the office of the Paymaster General. A founder member of the Scout Troop in St. Ippolyts, he was with Scoutmaster Arthur Edward Lloyd who was another Hitchin war casualty. To the Scouts, he was known as ‘Kitten’. In the early part of the war, he joined the Home Guard and was also a part-time fire-fighter during the blitz on London. During this period he took a keen interest in both music and calligraphy.
In 1941 he joined the RAF. with the Service Number 1392462 and, after training in this country, became a fighter pilot on Hurricanes, Spitfires and Typhoons. After active service over France, he was sent on embarkation leave and during this time became engaged to a Hitchin girl.
He served as part of the Allied Expeditionary Force ‘Operation Torch’ which landed in North Africa in November 1942. He was in 93 Squadron and flew a Spitfire VC from a landing strip southeast of Bone called Souk el Arba (known to the British as Sloane Square) but after a few weeks of action he was shot down over the mountains. Sadly, his body was not recovered.
His name is remembered among the missing on Panel 4, Column 1 on the RAF. Memorial at Floriana, King's Gate, at the main entrance to Valletta in Malta. Curiously the inscription shows his rank as Serjeant.
His parents were Samuel and Edith May Mincher of Hitchin.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Mr Stanley Mincher - his brother, Hitchin Grammar School Chronicle, Mr Albert (Roger) Isaac - one of the Scouts, ‘RAF. Squadrons’ by C.G. Jefford
