THE LOST SQUADRON

Flight Sergeant Jack Flockhart (left) with two fellow No. 38 Squadron aircrew beneath a Vickers Wellington at Landing Ground 60, Libyan Desert, 1941. Flockhart family archive.

THE ARCHIVE

Sergeant Jack Flockhart was an RAF air gunner who served with No. 38 Squadron across North Africa and the Mediterranean before joining No. 149 Squadron in Britain. He was killed during an operation against Germany on 6 June 1942, five days after his twenty-eighth birthday. His daughter Jacqueline grew up without him.

In 2017, Jacqueline came to an unfinished exhibition of my research. She brought a carrier bag containing her father’s North African photographs—an extraordinary personal record preserved by the family. I photographed the collection at high resolution before returning the originals to her.

Following Jacqueline’s death in 2026, I returned to the project. The Lost Squadron brings together Jack’s photographs, forbidden letter, RAF service record, squadron operational books, wartime maps and the handmade wooden Wellington that survived within my side of the family.

This is an archive in progress and a tribute to them both.

Large-format map artwork by Mark Pearson tracing No. 38 Squadron’s Second World War movement from Britain to the Middle East, with Wellington aircraft, ground-crew routes, bases and operations annotated across Europe and North Africa. — **No. 38 Squadron: Britain to the Middle East**, Mark Pearson, 2017. Large-format digital cartographic artwork assembled from wartime aviation charts, RAF operational records and family research.

THE SQUADRON MOVES EAST