A SUPERB "PATHFINDERS" (97 Sqd) RAF & (467 Sqd) RAAF. DISTINGUISHED FLYING MEDAL
Aircrew Europe Star (France & Germany Clasp)
Defence & War Medals.

with GVI General Service Medal.(Malaya)
To: Flt/Lt S.W. ARCHER. R.A.F.

&
Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service in The Air.(Silver Palm)

To: 1165798 Flt/Sgt - Flt/Lt S.W. ARCHER. R.A.F.

[RECOMMENDATION / CITATION]
"Sgt Archer, as Flight Engineer has taken part in attacks on Essen and Berlin and the majority of the most heavily defended objectives in Germany. He has also flown on long-distance raids on Italy. This airman has set a splendid example of skill and courage"

D.F.M. PRESENTED BY KING GEORGE VI AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE

A humorous story comes via Stan's four page eulogy where he actually met The King to receive his award. Apparently Stan also suffered from a speech stammer of a similar nature to the one famously suffered by the King, and during what was a fairly long conversation His Majesty and the then Flight Sergeant Archer stammered at each other for some minutes.

Stanley Archer was one of the best known characters and later inspecting engineers in the RAF. Interestingly, during his time with 467 Squadron RAAF he flew on several sorties in the famous veteran "S" Sugar 'Ton Up' Lancaster Bomber (R5868) which is seen here during bombing up during WW2 and is now on permanent display at the RAF Museum, Hendon. This aircraft survived the astonishing number of 137 operational sorties. (* and a goodly few more 'un-official' sorties while commanded by several high ranking officers who should not have been flying on raids over occupied territory at all.) Three such raids are referred to in Norman Frank's excellent book "TON-UP LANCS" where on page 30, Norman refers to Stan Archer's log books which record these "off the books" sorties to Courtrai on 20th July 1944, to Bergen on 20th October 1944 , and to Westcot on 26th April 1945 to bring back ex-POWs !!!!

THE MINIATURES are also included and they actually contain an Elizabeth II 'Malaya' GSM as Stan could not locate a GVI example when he had his miniatures mounted.


STAN ARCHER's LOG BOOKS ....are clearly still extant as they were given to an RAF Museum by a member of Archer's family some years ago ....we also believe that the family may still have available copies of the logs which we are in due course attempting to retrieve. Otherwise, we will be making further enquires from the holding museum in an attempt to obtain copies. Even in the temporary absence of the logs, we are about to retrieve the full record of Stan Archer's flying which is fully recorded sortie-by-sortie in the 97 & 467 Squadron operations (RAF Form 541) books which are freely available for inspection on line and in person at the National Archive at Kew.

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