William Denis Hallisey (5 Jun 1913 - 10 Dec 2014)

My wife and I would like to express sincere condolences to Bill’s family. I had known Bill for the last 15 years or so, we phoned one another a couple of times a year and we visited him in St. Ives from time to time. I sent him a card in June for what would have been his 102nd. birthday and rang several times. Not having news of him I eventually found this site through Google. We are very sorry to hear that Bill (I think his family knew him as Dennis) has gone to his final posting. I have attached a copy of a photograph I took of him in the back of a 230 Puma at RAF Aldergrove during our reunion in 2003.
I am a member of the committee of The 230 Squadron Association of which Bill was a member www.230sqn.co.uk For many years he volunteered at Duxford restoring their Sunderland. In 2014 he signed around 500 prints of copies of a painting of a 230 Squadron Sunderland depicted moored offshore near a tropical beach.
He will be remembered at our reunion in October.
He was a Customs and Excise Officer at the outbreak of war. He was finally allowed to enlist in January 1941, in the RAF Volunteer Reserve. After training he became a Flying Instructor spending two years in Canada, sometimes flying anti- submarine patrols from Halifax, in Hudson’s. He received an operational posting to 202 Squadron in April 1944 and was based in Gibraltar as a 2nd. Pilot on Catalina PBY’s, he flew during Operation Cork to protect the western flank of the D-Day landings from U-boats. In April 1945 he was posted to the Far East where he flew Sunderland’s with 230 Squadron against retreating Japanese coastal vessels, he also gave informal night –flying training. Following the Japanese surrender he represented the squadron to fly in the formal surrender ceremonies, then helped to ferry recently liberated Allied POW’s out of Singapore and back to India.
Fred Maryon

Our condolences to Chris, Moira, Mike and all the family. My apologies for getting in touch so late but, probably because I live abroad, I only found out now. Denis, Beryl and all the Halliseys were a big part of my childhood and staying at their house was fun. Denis was so kind and generous and he always found the time to do fun things with me, maybe because his own children had grown up by then. I can still remember going with him to inspect the Paine's Brewery in St. Neots, and being really upset at not being able to go and see an air show with him at Shuttleworth because I was ill. I'm glad that we kept in touch in later years (like the time I was part of a group of students that went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival: my parents and Denis and Beryl also went, and stayed at Moira’s apartment which, we discovered, was on the same floor of the same building where I was staying!), although I'm really sorry that I hadn't seen Denis since my mother's funeral in 2010, when he had a nice chat with me and my own son. With love and best wishes, Mark, Rosaria and Tommy Worden