FAILURE TO RETURN
GISBORNE AIRMAN MR. JACK LANGRIDGE BOMBER CREW MEMBER Grave concern has been caused the parents and relatives of Corporal Aircraftsman Jack Langridge, a Gisborne boy in the Royal Air Force, by a cable message received by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. A. F. Langridge, that the plane in which he was engaged had failed to return.
Corpora1 Aircraftsman Langridge. who was 21 years old, was a member of a Wellington bomber crew as a radio operator, and his parents viewed with some uneasiness news at the end of last week that two such planes had failed to return from operations over Norway, this being followed by cabled advice from official sources that their son was missing.
This development follows other exploits by the Royal Air Force in which, Corporal Aircraftsman Langridge has been engaged. He was in the raid on Kiel on the first day of the war, and was also in a Heligoland adventure early in December, coming out of both of these unscathed. Later, while on leave, he was injured in a motor car accident, which resulted in the death of a companion, and while he was convalescing the bomber crew of which he was a member went out on another raid from which their machine failed to return. Thus he was the only surviving member of the original crew which took part in the Kiel engagement. At the time of the departure of the latest mail from England, Corporal Aircraftsman Langridge was a member of a bomber crew of which Squadron-Leader W. Collett, also a former Gisborne boy, was in command. Squadron-Leader Collett is a son of Mr. and. Mrs. E. A. Collett. For some time Corporal Aircraftsman Langridge was a member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and was one of the party which went to England to bring back a number of planes to the Dominion. While there serious developments occurred in the international situation, and the New Zealanders were taken into the R.A.F.
Public - Lorraine Mona - Researcher - 6 May 2023 - FAILURE TO RETURN
GISBORNE HERALD, VOLUME LXVII, ISSUE 20222, 15 APRIL 1940, PAGE 6