15/03/1922 –27/01/1944
Sergeant, RAF; one of 2 brothers who served in WWII; killed on a training exercise
Relatives
Research:
The Street Brother: Flying Officer Peter Robert DFM and Sergeant Richard
For two brothers to lose their lives in WW2 is not particularly unusual but for those two brothers to be buried in the same cemetery in the UK must be fairly rare.
The brothers were the only children of Robert William Street and Anita May nee Rolls. Their father Robert had signed up in the first war but was not considered fit for foreign service due to poor vision. He served in the UK from 1915 to October 1919. His actual trade, like his father, was in banking. Their mother was born in Dorset but by 1917 was living in St Giles, Oxfordshire. This is where their parents married in September 1917. Robert gave his age as 31 but by this time he would have been more like 33 and Anita was 18.
Peter Robert was born in St Giles, Oxford in 1919 and Richard was born in Berkhamsted on 15th March 1922. In May 1928 their father died, he was buried in Rectory Lane cemetery on 3rd May. At the time the family were living at 109 Gossoms End.
Richard, the younger of the two brothers, was only 6 years old when his father died. Like his brother, he was educated at Christ’s hospital from 1932 to 1939. He was then employed as a ledger clerk and at the beginning of the war was living with his mother and grandmother at 28 Cowper Road (a house called Nithsdale). In October 1941 he joined the RAF at Cardington, Bedfordshire. He was killed in a training exercise in Stirling III EH933, while serving with the 1660 Heavy Conversion Unit. The plane took off on 26th January 1944 from Swinderby for a night cross-country. While flying at high altitude just inland from the south coast of Devon, a sudden and terrible disaster overtook the crew and their aircraft dropped from the sky, breaking apart as it fell. At 0004 hrs the fuselage and most of the mainplane crashed onto Exton Hill, near Coppleham Cross, just above the hamlet of Bridgetown, and close to the Exmoor Village of Exton. Debris was recovered from along a path stretching three and a half miles eastwards from the main impact point and A.I.B specialists later determined that the rear fuselage had detached at around 14,000 ft followed circa 10,000 to 11,000 ft by the elevators and rear turret. Richard was 21 years old and his role at the time was air gunner. A memorial commemorating the crew who died in the crash was erected close to the crash site in 2021. Exactly 28 days after the loss of her son, Peter, Anita lost her only surviving child. In May 1950 she lost her mother and in July of that year she married Arthur Meacher in Berkhamsted, he died six years later. Anita lived in Berkhamsted until her death in 1965.
Peter, the eldest of the two brothers was educated at Berkhamsted School and Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham. He served as a Flying Officer in the RAF and was killed on a training exercise on 30th December 1943, aged 24.
The Hemel Hempstead Gazette and West Herts Advertiser Friday 7th January 1944 – Airman Hero Killed.
Image of Peter taken from the Hemel Hempstead Gazette and west Herts Advertiser
View burial 
Berkhamsted War Memorial
Personalities of the Past
The Fallen of WWI in Rectory Lane Cemetery
Memorial Symbolism
