Notes
Cullen Eric Powell was born on 13 March 1920, the only child of Sheila (née O’Grady) and Harold Powell of India. Following the death of his father in Australia in 1925, Cullen Powell and his mother returned to England from Calcutta in June 1926. She married Edwin Valentine Manners-Smith in 1931.
Cullen Powell was educated at Charterhouse School where he was a member of the Cricket 2nd XI and won his colours in athletics for pole vaulting. He entered Worcester College, Oxford on 13 October 1939 but left in 1940 to join the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He rose to the rank of Sergeant and was posted to 107 Squadron.
On 1 August 1941 Cullen Powell and his crew took off with two other aircraft from RAF Great Massingham in Norfolk in a Blenheim aircraft for an anti-shipping operation in the Nieuport and Ostend area of the Belgian coast. They successfully bombed two enemy ships, but during the attack Cullen Powell’s aircraft was shot down and crashed in the Scheldt Estuary. Sergeant Cullen Powell was killed in the crash, aged 22.
Cullen Powell is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial, and on the war memorials at Charterhouse School and Worcester College, Oxford.