F/Sgt Roy Taylor, crew 160 - Newspaper excerpt, images
F/Sgt Roy Taylor, crew 160 (7 missions)
Roy was a Mid-Upper Air-Gunner for the Dawson crew, the following article appeared in Cumberland Times, Maryland. U.S.A.
67 years later, Canadian air force gunner receives combat medals
LAVALE — Sixty-seven years after shooting down a Messerschmitt over Hamburg, Germany, LaVale resident Roy Taylor has received combat medals from the Royal Canadian air force, for which he was a gunner on the bomber Piccadilly Princess.
“There were only three or four Me 262 Messerschmitts ever shot down by the air force, so I guess it was a big deal in some ways,” Taylor said Thursday, seated in his home on Park Avenue and poring over old photos, clippings and memories. The speedy German aircraft, the world’s first jet-powered fighter plane, could hit 560 mph. The Piccadilly Princess maxed out at 275 mph.
Taylor points out that the incident is officially listed as a probable kill rather than an actual kill, but only because the crew of the four-engine Lancaster bomber was too busy surviving to watch the enemy airplane hit the ground and confirm its destruction.
Taylor’s view of the war in 1943 came from the top of the bomber where he was a gunner firing .303 caliber ammunition from two barrels situated between the cockpit and the tail.
“All of our bombing missions had been at night, but this was the first of what turned out to be four daylight missions,” explained Taylor, who was 18 at the time. He flew 28 bombing runs in all, firing at enemy planes during almost all of them.
“I could see this Messerschmitt coming straight at us,” Taylor recalled, explaining that he began firing and also instructed the pilot to use a corkscrew flying technique to avoid being hit.
“I could see the bullets hitting the Messerschmitt,” Taylor said. “Then all of a sudden it just went straight down.”
Taylor gets credit for the kill in the book “The Messerschmitt Combat Diary, Me 262” by John Foreman and S.E. Harvey.
Roy and Devota Taylor have been married for 60 years. It was their granddaughter, Ashley Owen of Richmond, Va., who made all the calls, reaching the right people and resulting in the medals being sent.
Recently, Taylor received the France and Germany Star with clasp, Defence Medal, Canadian Volunteer Service Medal and War Medal 1939-1945.
Taylor was born in England. Because he was still a British subject, the U.S. Air Force rejected his attempts to enlist. At that point, the Cumberland resident, who had moved here because his father, Renwick Taylor, became the general merchandise manager at Rosenbaum’s, a downtown clothing store, went north of the border, seeking out the Royal Canadian air force.
Roy and Devota, she being a Cumberland native, moved 21 times since they were married in 1949 as he worked in retail management jobs at various locations, the most recent being at a mall he managed in Mobile, Ala. He retired 15 years ago and the couple returned to Allegany County.
In a Cumberland Evening Times article written by J. Suter Kegg on July 29, 1947, Taylor’s prowess as a softball pitcher for the Astor Cabbies is recognized as are his war feats which, at that time, were just a few years into the past.
The Taylors have a son, Roy Taylor Jr., in Raleigh, N.C., and a daughter, Devota Ann Johnson, in Detroit.