Vincent Waterfall

Vincent Waterfall was the first airman, along with his co pilot to be killed in the First World War.

He was born on the 25th May 1892 in Grimsby, Lincolnshire to Walter Frank Waterfall and Mary Figgins and was the youngest of 10 children.  By the time of the 1911 census, Vincent and his family had moved to Burgess Hill in West Sussex.

In January 1912, he was gazetted to the 3rd Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment.  In 1913 Vincent trained as a pilot The Vickers School, Broadlands and in July 1914 he joined the Royal Flying Corps becoming a Flying Officer in August 1914.

On the morning of the 22nd August 1914, Vincent Waterfa1l and his co-pilot were flying over Labliau near Enghien in Belgium and were shot down by German Platoons and were killed.  Vincent is buried at Tournai Communal Cemetery Allied Extension in Belgium.

Comments

  1. Unknown23 December 2015 at 04:45

    Hello Nicola,

    My name is David Johnson. I am a Canadian that is involved in an organization that builds and flies world war one aircraft and has a museum dedicated to both allied and axis forces (http://greatwarflyingmuseum.org/). We are looking at building and Avro 504 as one of our projects for the museum. My Uncle Reginald G. Waterfall (Flight Lieutenant DFC), was also a pilot but he flew Lancaster bombers during the second world war. He was based out of Metheringham with 106 squadron and later 630 squadron in East Kirkby. He survived the war and later immigrated to Canada (July 1953) with my father William E. Johnson. Many of my Waterfall cousins now living in Ottawa, Canada. Your blog has triggered a number of questions and I am trying to determine if my Uncle's family is connected in some way with yours. Hope to hear back... David

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