Deadlines

Deadlines is the story of one young man whose short life was shaped and ended by war and who never knew how he influenced the life of another young man in the following generation.

Colin Curtis was Mike Curtis’s uncle who joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve and was trained to fly Wellington bombers. The son of a south Lincolnshire vicar, he was shot down off the Dutch coast on his third mission on 20th January 1942. He was 22. The Wellington and the six on board from 101 Squadron were never found. Colin was one of 55,573 men who died in Bomber Command during WW2. His life was unremarkable but ended dramatically and violently. Mike has researched his life, his time in the RAF and imagined his last hours alive. The German nightfighter ace who shot down the Wellington of Colin Curtis suffered the same fate a year later.