Flight engineer who survived some of the most dangerous missions of the Second World War

Born: May 3, 1924;

Died: September 28, 2017

JACK Burgess, who has died aged 93, survived some of the longest and most dangerous flights of the Second World War as a flight engineer on Liberator bombers before embarking on his final mission to give a voice to forgotten airmen.

It was a mission that he accomplished with distinction. With time fast running out, he persuaded elderly comrades to speak and write about their wartime experiences, then created three books along with a vast digital archive of their accounts for the Scottish Saltire Aircrew Association. In the course of this work, Mr Burgess discovered some veterans had been so traumatised that they had never discussed what they had been through, even with their own families.

He considered it tragic that so many courageous men who had served their country were passing away and taking their memories with them. "I know from my own experience that aircrew were often reluctant to speak of their past," he recalled. "Silence was often preferred."

Mr Burgess had been unable to face talking about his own years fighting the Japanese in the Far East for decades after the end of the war. The operational stress and horrors of what happened to downed aircrews who fell into enemy hands was well-known. Prior to missions, each crew member was issued with a revolver and six bullets; one to be saved for themselves if they faced capture.

After joining the RAF he trained in Montreal, Canada, and Nassau, Bahamas, on the new B-24 Liberator bombers, qualifying as a flight engineer. Rather than return to Montreal to test-fly the aircraft as they left the factory, he volunteered for active service in the Far East.

Mr Burgess served on special operations in the Burma campaign with 200 squadron at Karachi, India (now Pakistan), then 160 Squadron in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). With Force 136, he and his crew dropped agents and guerilla fighters hundreds of miles behind enemy lines.

Flights on the long-range Liberator were the longest of the war, in one case lasting almost 24 hours over a distance of 3,800 miles. For his service in the theatre, Mr Burgess was awarded the Burma Star with Pacific clasp.

Mr Burgess had to remain in India after the end of the war in an administrative job in Karachi until demob in 1947. He went to the 70th anniversary commemoration of VJ day in London because his own belated homecoming had been such a "dismal affair". He recalled: "The original VJ event was such a personal non-event due to arriving back in the UK 14 months after it occurred, with people saying, 'Where the heck have you been? Didn't you know we had a war on?'"

Jack Burgess was born in Falkland, Fife, to Alfred Burgess, a First World War veteran and factory labourer from Rochester, Kent, and Jessie Robertson, a native of Falkland. He had a brother, Eddie.

He attended Viewforth High School in Kirkcaldy and joined the Scouts and Air Training Corps, taking his first flight in 1941 aged 17 in a Hudson bomber out of Leuchers, piloted by a Dutchman. He took a factory job and joined the RAF as soon as he was old enough.

He met his wife Margaret, a wartime ATS pay clerk, at a dance, married her in 1950 and they went on to have four children. He took up a late apprenticeship as a print block cutter at the linoleum factory in Falkland then moved to work in the same line in Kirkcaldy, but disliked the trade and moved to ICI before being made redundant in 1971.

He then embarked on the education that the war had denied him, gaining Highers at college and becoming an instructor at an adult education centre. He achieved a diploma in teaching adults with special needs at Durham University and was asked to establish an identical course at Kirkcaldy College, the first of its kind in Scotland.

His enthusiasm for higher education continued and he joined the Open University, studying in the evenings while teaching the diploma course during the day and graduating with a BA in psychology and education in 1983. He took early retirement in 1985 but progressed to gain his honours degree in social science in 1991.

Unknown to many, Mr Burgess was also a skilled magician and member of the Magic Circle who took great delight in dusting down his box of conjuring tricks to entertain his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren at parties and family gatherings.

In 1986, he joined the Scottish branch of the Aircrew Association (SSAA) and went on to tour Sri Lanka with his wife, visiting the airfield where he took off on many missions. After they got home, he felt the time was right to exorcise the ghosts of the Far East and get to work in the spirit of comradeship. His research project began in 1999 and he was still SSAA web coordinator and public relations officer in his 90s.

In 2005 Mr Burgess published the first 50 personal stories in book form. The trilogy was completed in 2010. By now equipped with an iPad, he published 250 aircrew accounts online.

With the website well-established, in 2015 Mr Burgess was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to military aviation, having earlier received a presidential award from the Aircrew Association with an identical citation.

Mr Burgess spent his final days at the Erskine Home for veterans in Edinburgh, where he oversaw the disbanding of the SSAA in July due to the failing health of its remaining officers. With the website and archives safeguarded for the immediate future, his mission was accomplished.

His wife predeceased him and they are survived by their children Alf, Margaret, James and Irene, seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

CAMPBELL THOMAS