Jante Philips was a volunteer at the NMA right from the start until she retired from it in 2015. She brought in some of these photographs and stories to scan.
Lt.Col.Ben Wells R.A. 1900-1942, was the officer in charge of all troops on board the American troop ship USA Coamo. US soldiers had been landed on Algiers in Operation Torch and Coamo returned to Gibraltar to join a convoy heading for the Liverpool. On the way back to England Coamo and another US ship, the Mariposa were diverted to the US. The rest of the convoy reached home and the Mariposa reached the USA but the Coamo was sunk in mid Atlantic.
The coded message from U Boat 604, saying they had sunk it was intercepted in England and decoded so they knew the ship was lost, but relatives were only told it was missing, as they did not want the Germans to know they had cracked the code.
It was months later that relatives were told that their loved ones were “presumed dead”. I researched it all years later and was able to find out roughly what had happened.
Denis Phillips served in the RAF during WWII. He was a volunteer at the NMA right from the start until he retired from it after ten years.
Flt.Lt. A. Paul Mellows DFC was a Mosquito pilot in WW11 who flew 50 missions over Germany.
On one occasion he flew through the explosion of a plane he had shot down and his plane was stripped of its outer covering and the rudder so badly damaged he had no control over it. Mechanics were amazed he managed to get it home. On another occasion he limped into the aerodrome at mansion, Kent, after shooting down a plane and being hit by flak. This had an extra long runway to accommodate damaged planes and ground mechanics told him only had enough coolant left for him to have flown another five minutes. For all this he was ordered the DFC.
Jante Phillips was his sister-in-law.
