On 19 November 1941 he became a pilot for the 1st Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) flying out of RAF Benson South Oxfordshire,[5] England.

Due to a solid cloud layer at low altitude he was unable to take photographs and when he observed two enemy aircraft approaching from the southeast he started his return home.

He had been on a high-level reconnaissance mission to Düsseldorf and Essen to photograph bombed factories when he was either shot down or suffered engine failure (accounts vary).

[3][5] He became a prisoner of war and was sent to Oflag IX-AH Spangenberg Castle, followed by Stalag Luft III[3] in Germany in the province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań in Poland).

[2] He was one of the 50 executed and murdered by the Gestapo[2] on the personal orders of Adolf Hitler on 31 March 1944 and then cremated at Liegnitz, now remembered at the Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery.