P/O Desmond was reported missing as the result of air operations on the night of 19/20 February 1944 when Lancaster aircraft ME588, in which he was flying as captain and pilot, set out to bomb Leipzig and was not heard from again.
It was shot down by night fighters and crashed at Almke, Helmstedt, Germany. Buriel of the seven members of the crew took place in the nearby village of Marienthal.
Their remains where exhumed post-war and re-interred in a communal group of graves in the British Military Cemetery at Hotton, Belgium: