Robin flew from Dunkerswell airfield on many occasions and was well known there. Today, the airfield abuts the trading estate and you have to use your imagination when trying to picture the airfield when it was first constructed and in use by the US Navy as a base for Liberator squadrons. The Liberator crews flew hundreds of sorties out into the channel, the Atlantic and Bay of Biscay seeking out and destroying German U-boats. Not all made it home and if you visit the village church you'll see a memorial to the many flyers who didn't make it back.
August 1944
The squadron's most famous pilot was Jo Kennedy Jnr, elder brother of JFK. Kennedy's last mission was part of a secret operation to bomb the V2 rocket sites with a Liberator bomber loaded to the gunnels with high explosives. After setting the bomber on its course, Kennedy and his co-pilot Wilford Willy, were to bail out over the Norfolk coast in order for the plane to be remotely guided to its target, but before they could jump the plane exploded in mid-air - the largest explosion ever witnessed in Northern Europe at that time. Only fragments of the plane were recovered and they can be seen in the museum at Dunkerswell.
Had Jo Kennedy succeeded in his mission, he might have lived to become president instead of his younger brother Jack. Had that happened, we can only speculate as to the outcome of the Bay of Pigs incident and the Cuba Missile Crisis.
Also, had the mission succeeded, Robin may well have been born in his native London rather than in Blackpool, his mother Violet having been evacuated along with many hundreds of other Londoners after having witnessed the destruction caused by a V1 rocket.
