BAMOS June 2017
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Monash. In WWII he was brought out of retirement to become Chief of General Staff( CGS) and died, along with three cabinet members; Street, Gullett and Fairbairn when their aeroplane crashed on landing in Canberra on 13 August 1940. There is considerable debate as to what caused the crash, whether it was pilot error or whether turbulence may have been a factor. The weather was in fact fine at the time with some cloud about.
The Hutchins Brothers( bottom image)
Seven brothers enlisted in WWII and four of them died as POWs of the Japanese. Three brothers( David, Fred and Eric) had consecutive numbers and died alongside a cousin( Thomas) as POW’ s on Ambon. The other brother, Alan died as a POW on Rabaul. How much did the tropical weather and climate along with the poor treatment and lack of medicine and food lead to their deaths? The death rate of the POWs at Ambon was close to 70 %. As a follow up, another cousin was a part of the Engineering corps who landed on Ambon in October 1945 whose duty was to uncover and identify the dead.
References
Australian War Memorial( www. awm. gov. au)
a. https:// www. awm. gov. au / encyclopedia / enlistment / b.
Roll of Honour c. Collection( photographs)
BBC. 2013. Men’ s average height‘ up 11 cm since 1870s. www. bbc. com / news / health-23896855( Accessed 20 May 2017).
Bean, C. E. W. 1941a. Official History of Australia in the War of 1914 – 1918 Vol 1. www. awm. gov. au / collection / C1416844.
Bean, C. E. W. 1941b. Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services 1914-1918 Vol 1 Part 1. www. awm. gov. au / collection / C1416843.
Davis, C. 2015. Reality vs Myth: An Analysis of Death Rates at Gallipoli. Sabretache Vol LV1 No. 1 p33 – 38.
FO G. C. Yorkston( W / O), FO E. H. McDonald( W / O) 251 Squadron RAF
These two Flying Officers were wireless operators on a Meteorological flight in a Hudson out of Reykjavik, Iceland on 17 March 1945 when their aeroplane lost contact just over an hour before they were due to return. In a terrible twist of fate Yorkston’ s older brother also died in an aircraft accident in the UK two weeks earlier when his aeroplane crashed on landing. As weather became more and more important during WWII, both in battles and in forecasting such as for the D-Day landings, the need to get weather observations from upstream was vital. As a consequence, the RAF set up Squadrons and Flights to undertake these tasks. These aircraft would fly out from places like Iceland, the Shetland Islands in northern Scotland and over the Atlantic to gather this information. Even in the desert and India, RAF aeroplanes were sent up for this task. On some occasions these aircraft were lost, either just disappearing without a trace, colliding with each other, reporting SOS, crashing on take- off or as a result of bad weather. FO Yorkston and FO McDonald were just two of 18 Royal Australian Air Force personnel who died whilst flying in RAF Meteorological aircraft during WWII.
The Hutchins Brothers. David is first on the left, Eric third left, Fred is fourth from the left in the back row and Alan in the middle on the bottom row.
All images from the Australian War Memorial.