Thomas Guthrie

Bank: Commercial Bank of Scotland

Place of work: Forfar branch

Died: 29 December 1943

Thomas Guthrie was born in Kirkcaldy on 4 June 1912, the son of James P Guthrie, a local solicitor, and his wife. After leaving school he went to work for Commercial Bank of Scotland. Outside work he was an active member of Kirkcaldy & District Motor Club and was a keen motorcyclist. In 1936-7 he served as Kilmarnock's burgh warden. 

In 1940 Guthrie left his job in the bank's Forfar branch, where he had been based since January 1939, to go on war service. He joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and served in West Africa before being posted back to Britain as part of Coastal Command.

On the afternoon of 29 December 1943 Flying Officer Guthrie was part of the three-man crew of an Avro Anson briefed to search for an Oxford that had ditched into the Bristol Channel on a training flight that morning. The Anson did not return from the search, and all three men were declared missing. Some months later it was concluded that they had been killed on that day. Guthrie was 31 years old.

Thomas Guthrie is commemorated on a bank war memorial at Gogarburn campus, Edinburgh.