Tom Leigh (RAF officer)

Thomas Barker Leigh (11 February 1919 – 31 March 1944) was an Australian-born Handley Page Halifax bomber rear gunner who was taken prisoner during the Second World War.

He left the Mercury on 29 July 1935 having been accepted for the 32nd Entry of RAF Apprentices commencing 20 August 1935 at the Royal Air Force's No.

[4] On the night of 5 August 1941 Leigh flew as rear gunner aboard Handley Page Halifax (serial number "L9516"), attacking railway workshops at Karlsruhe in Germany.

[5] The bomber took off from RAF Middleton St George at about 21:45 hours and bombed the larger of two fires below before being "coned" (illuminated by a battery of searchlights).

Half of the bomber's tail section was shot off and at about 02:00 hours Sergeant Thomas Byrne, the pilot, gave the order to bale out over Germany.

[6] Leigh was captured at about 07:00 hours that morning near Worms and after processing and interrogation at Dulag Luft at Oberusel, was allocated Prisoner of War No.

Leigh, Edgar Humphreys, Jack Grisman, Leslie George Bull and several other prisoners were part of the group with Bushell who were sent to Stalag Luft III in the province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań in Poland).

[10] Recaptured after travelling for several nights on foot in freezing conditions Leigh was one of nineteen officers loaded into a lorry the following day and moved to Görlitz prison under Gestapo control.

[citation needed] On 30 March 1944, two of the survivors saw three large sedans with ten Gestapo agents collect six officers, Ian Cross, Mike Casey, George Wiley, Tom Leigh, John Pohe and Al Hake struggling to walk on his frostbitten feet.