Sergeant, RAF
Born: September 21st 1919
Died: August 12th 1941
Age at Death: 21
Presumed killed, August 12th 1941
Guardians: W Young, 21 Broadwater Road, Worthing
Charles was born on 21 September 1919, the only child of Frederick Young, an optician in Worthing, and his wife Evelyn. After four years as a day pupil in Durnford House, he volunteered for the RAF. By the beginning of the war Young was in 149 Squadron, a night bomber unit. The squadron flew the Vickers Wellington.
In August 1941 a crew including Young took off from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk to carry out an early trial of ‘GEE’, a top secret new navigation aid for bomber crews. GEE measured the time delay between two radio signals to produce a fix, with an accuracy of a few hundred metres at ranges up to about 350 miles. For large, fixed targets, such as the cities that were attacked at night, GEE offered enough accuracy to be used as an aiming reference without the need for a bombsight or other external reference.
Young’s plane is believed to have been damaged over Hanover before finally coming down near Sylt, a German island in the North Sea. The bodies of the crew were never recovered, so he is commemorated at the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial.