Thundering Heard Nose Art

This Handley Page Halifax B. Mk. II, serial JB859, code VR-H was named by the pilot Stanley Mervyn Heard, from Swift Current, Saskatchewan. The Nose Artist was P/O Ley Kenyon, who painted the feelings of the 23 year old Western farm pilot.

F/L Heard completed six operations in his Halifax JB859 . This bomber completed twenty-one operations between 22 March and 12 August 1943.

RCAF crews could not always fly the same aircraft on operations. On 17 August 43, No. 419 [Moose] squadron assigned seventeen Halifax aircraft to attack the German rocket base at Peenemunde. Heard was flying his fifteenth operation in Halifax JD158, code VR-D. F/L Heard and crew were all killed when they were attacked by a night fighter and crashed in the Baltic Sea near Greifswald, Germany. This was one of 40 allied bombers lost on this single raid.

The Halifax “Thundering Heard” was not assigned to the operation and was transferred to 1666 Heavy Conversion Unit on 29 August 1943. In 1945 the aircraft was ferried to the former repair depot at Rawcliffe and scrapped.

Painted on original skin from NA337, this panel was donated by Clarence Simonsen to the Halifax restoration project at Trenton, Ontario in 1999.