Sergeant Pilot, RAFVR
Born: January 14th 1916
Died: October 10th 1939
Age at Death: 23
Killed, October 10th 1939
Philip was born in Putney, London, in January 1916 to Clement Hemsley, a company secretary, and his wife Gertrude (née Johanssen).
Hemsley joined the Royal Air Force at the beginning of the war and was assigned to 108 Squadron, a training unit based at Bicester in Oxfordshire. He was killed during a training flight on 10 October 1939 when his plane, a Blenheim bomber, went down. Many inexperienced pilots died during training, but so too did many experienced ones, including the Czech pilot Josef František, one of the highest-scoring air aces of the Battle of Britain, who died a year later almost to the day.
Hemsley is remembered at the Runnymede Memorial to 20,455 air force personnel who perished in the war with no known grave.