Pledge to ‘keep fighting’ for memorial to wartime ace

Hull Council’s civic committee meets today to consider a request to honour Air Commodore Ronald Berry CBE DSO DFC and Bar, a city-born Spitfire pilot who began his working life as a junior clerk in the treasurer’s department at Hull Corporation.

But a report has described such a tribute as “disproportionate” and says it would create an “unsustainable precedent” if other names are put forward.

Mr Berry’s great-niece, Caroline Moore, who wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting a memorial, said the family were saddened by the report.

“It’s upsetting,” she said. “To think that he spent the first years of his life working for Hull City Council. He did a lot during the war and it’s just a shame they can’t recognise him with something.”

But Mrs Moore, who described her great uncle as “a very private man” and “great fun”, said the family would be unlikely to accept defeat if today’s decision goes against them. “I’m quite sure we’ll keep fighting until something is done,” she said.

Born in Westcott Street in 1917, he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in 1938 and was released for service after the outbreak of war in 1939.

He flew Spitfires during the Battle of Britain in 1940, when British, Commonwealth and Allied airmen pulled off a stunning victory against the Luftwaffe, forcing Nazi Germany to abandon plans for an invasion.

The pilot, who went on to see action in France and North Africa, was credited with 22 kills, a further 11 shared, 11 probable, and 24 enemy aircraft damaged or destroyed. He was made a CBE in 1965 and died in 2000, aged 83.

However, the report said: “His number of ‘kills’ in the Battle of Britain was high but was not the highest, and it is debatable whether 80 years after the Battle of Britain, in utterly different times, we should seek to honour an airman for this reason alone.”

Author Don Chester, who wrote a book about the pilot and is campaigning for the memorial, called the report “a very narrow, disinterested point of view”.