John F. M. Millar Flying Officer R.A.F., killed on active service 25th January 1941 aged 25; only son of John Forrest Millar died 27th April 1959 aged 73; Betsy Morton died 31st May 1963 aged 75.
CWGC: Flying Officer (Pilot) John Forrest Morton Millar, R.A.F., Service No. 42251; d. 28 January 1941, a. 25; s. of John and Bessie (sic) Millar, of Edinburgh. Z 366.
John Forrest Morton Millar was born in Leith on 11 August 1915, the year after John Forrest Millar, then a grocer’s manager, and Betsy Morton, a domestic servant, married in Uddingston, despite both giving Edinburgh addresses. In 1930 John Forrest Millar was a licensed grocer in Bathgate but electoral registers show that by 1939 the family were back in Edinburgh living at 19 Warrender Park Crescent. This was the address given as John Forrest Morton Millar’s usual residence on his death certificate in 1941 and his parents were still living there in the mid-1950s although they both died in East Lothian.
John Forrest Morton Millar’s fate is recorded in the International Bomber Command Centre Losses Database (https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/116132/). This includes a report that on 25 January 1941 Millar took off in a Vickers Wellington IC, registration number R1164, from Kirkbride [Cumbria] at 1500 “in the company of other aircraft and set course for Lossiemouth, the aircraft having been assigned to 20 OTU. As the formation proceeded on a northerly course, the weather deteriorated and about an hour into the flight, F/O Millar, the ferry pilot and sole occupant of the Wellington, was observed to lose contact. It was subsequently reported that he had crashed into Box Law, roughly 3 miles ENE of Largs, Ayrshire. The aircraft was totally destroyed and the Court of Inquiry recommended that in future a wireless operator should be tasked to accompany pilots undertaking delivery flights.” 20 OTU was No 20 Operational Training Unit formed in May 1940 at RAF Lossiemouth to train night bomber crews flying the Vickers Wellington, a twin-engined, long-range bomber used as a night bomber in the early years of WW2. John F. M. Millar’s death certificate gives cause of death as multiple injuries including a fractured skull as a result of the crash.