Military History

Hugh is listed as being killed in action during an arial battle near Nieuport on July 12th 1917. The following is taken from the Air War 1914-1918 website.

2 July 1917 – Big day out

The air offensive in support of the British Offensive (scheduled for the last week of July) in the Ypres area was due to begin on 8 July, but poor weather restricted activity until yesterday when there was some bombing activity in the evening. Today however, saw the most intensive fighting of the war to date.

There was fighting all day along the whole front, but it was most concentrated in the area opposite the Fifth Army. What was also noticeable was that the scale of these battles. The German formations were often very large, and very quickly a range of smaller British and French formations would join in the fight resulting in large scale engagements.

For example, in the evening there was a general engagement, lasting an hour, between a mixed formation of thirty German single-seaters, (from Jastas 4, 6, 36 and MFJ I and a force of British (1 29 and 66 Squadrons abd C flight of 56 Squadron) and some French SPADs of similar strength. The Allied aircraft claimed 12 enemy aircraft shot down but the records show that in reality only 1 German pilot was injured and even he got back. The British lost on pilot taken prisoner – 2nd Lieutenant Harold Morgan Lewis from 29 Squadron whose Nieuport 23 (B1625) was hit by AA fire.

However elsewhere in the fighting the British lost nine aircraft, 13 crew killed and 3 more taken prisoner. 29 Squadron suffered a bad day as earlier in the day they had lost 2nd Lieutenant Hugh Holtom Whytehead in Nieuport 23 A6782 and 2nd Lieutenant James Wellington Fleming in Nieuport 23 B1658.

Stratford Herald - Friday 26th October 1917
KILLED IN ACTION - SECOND LIEUTENANT WHYTEHEAD

This gallant young officer who was killed in action in July was educated at St. Ninian’s Moffatt at Shrewsbury. He entered Birmingham University in 1913 as a student of oil mining but left at the outbreak of war and joined the 5th North Staffordshire Regiment as a private. On August 17th 1914 he obtained a commission in the 9th North Staffs and served in France some months. He then came home and served as a motor despatch rider. Subsequently he joined the RFC and went out to France as a pilot on 23rd June 1917.

His captain reported him missing on 12th July. He went over enemy lines that morning with a patrol of 8 and he and another pilot failed to return. News has just been received through another RFC prisoner in Germany that he was brought down and killed on that day.