Dunstable Yesteryear - Gunner died in Berlin raid

The tragic story of Cliff Stenning, who died when his aircraft was shot down near Berlin on August 31, 1943, was  featured in the service sheet distributed for Dunstable’s wreath-laying ceremony at the town’s War Memorial on Sunday. Cliff was aged 18 and has no known grave.

He is pictured here with an image of a Handley Page Halifax II bomber in which he was an air gunner during the war.

Sgt Charles Clifford Stenning, whose life has been researched for this Yesteryear article by David Underwood, was born in Barnet on January  23 1925 to Charles and Dorothy Stenning. The family moved to Dunstable and lived at 48 French’s Avenue before buying a house in Furness Avenue.

Cliff had been an avid Sea Scout and at some point left home to join the training ship T.S. Arethusa II, permanently moored on the Medway, as a boy sailor. When war broke out in 1939 his mother brought him back to Dunstable and he began training as an apprentice at AC Sphinx.

But at some point he ran away from home. Weeks later his father, a haulage contractor, was driving a truck in London when he spotted Cliff in army uniform working as an army despatch rider! Cliff was under-age for service in the armed forces, so he was brought back to Dunstable once more.

But he ran away again, and the next his family heard was a letter informing them that had joined the RAFVR and was in Canada training to be an air-gunner.

He came back to the UK with the rank of sergeant and was posted to 78 Squadron in Yorkshire. He was among the seven-man crew of a bomber which was shot down during a raid on Berlin. He and two others were killed.

Cliff left a wife and a son. In January 1942, aged 17, he had married Ivy Margaret Guess in Aylesbury.

Yesteryear is compiled by John Buckledee, chairman of Dunstable and District Local History Society.