Source: Leicestershire War Memorials Project.
Tom Wiliam Kempin, Service Number 1245511, Royal Air Force Reserve. Tom Kempin was a police constable in Coventry, who joined the RAF following the devastating air raids of 1940. After flight training in California, he was promoted to Flying Officer and continued his training in the UK, eventually gaining over 600 hours on single engine aircraft before converting to Mosquito twin engine bomber version aircraft.
He was transferred to 613 (City of Manchester) squadron based at RAF Lasham in the south of England.
He had already 27 hours of acclimatization on the Mosquito VI LR272 aircraft before the fatal incident.
He took off from Lasham on 2nd January 1944 with his navigator, Flight Sergeant Dennis Russell, on an approved practice bombing sortie at Woodcot Range, at 3.40pm. Almost immediately after take-off black smoke and flames were seen coming from the starboard engine, The aircraft continued to climb but eventually started to lose height and hit a fir tree, the aircraft fell to ground and bounced along for some 100 yards before hitting a fence-line and the air crew were thrown out and killed instantly. An official Rolls-Royce report stated that a fractured spring in the engine caused the crash.
There were some additional comments about the incident, which is detailed in AVIA 5/22 report W1742 in the National Archives at Kew.
information supplied by family friend, Mr. T. Hunt 29/03/2017