Walter Churchill

Group captain Walter Myers Churchill, (24 November 1907 – 27 August 1942) was a Royal Air Force pilot and flying ace during World War II. Churchill was the elder brother of Peter Churchill and Oliver Churchill, both of whom were Special Operations Executive officers during the Second World War. Early life Churchill was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on 24 November 1907 to William Algernon Churchill, a British diplomat, and singer Violet Churchill (née Myers). William served as a British consul in Mozambique and Pará in Brazil prior to Walter's birth, and in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Milan, Palermo, and Algiers in Walter's youth. William was also an art connoisseur, and author of what is still the standard reference work on early European paper and papermaking, Watermarks in Paper. Churchill was named after his uncle Walter Myers, an eminent physician and bacteriologist who died in 1901 aged 28. He was educated at Sedbergh School, and in 1926 read Modern Languages at King's College, Cambridge. He then became an aeronautical engineer with Armstrong Siddeley Motors, Coventry, after which he started an aviation precision engineering company, Churchill Components (Coventry) Ltd, in 1937, which supplied machined parts such as exhaust valves for radial aero-engines to Armstrong Siddeley. After being blitzed out of Coventry in 1941, the company re-located to Market Bosworth. The company worked for Sir Frank Whittle, the jet-engine pioneer, and it machined compressor blades for the gas-turbine engines in the early 1940s.