Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of Kenneth Alfred and Louisa Jane Ottaway, of 142 Walcott Street, Mount Lawley, Western Australia.

Prior to enlistment, Greer worked for 16 months as a Junior Clerk at Jackson, Leake, Stowell & Co.  and as a Costing Clerk & Sub Accountant for 3 1/2 years at Attwood Motors Ltd.

During daylight hours of 21st November 1944, Flight Officer Ottaway as captain and pilot, together with his crew took off at 15.28 hours to carry out a bombing attack on an enemy target of Aschaffenburg.

Communications of his death report that his aircraft crashed about one and quarter miles north of Eich, on the 21st November, 1944.  The aircraft exploded and on impact caught fire.  The village of Eich is situated approximately 10 miles north of Worms.  The report adds that the bodies of five members of the crew were recoered by the Germans and interred in a communal grave in the Eich Cemetery.  Following exhumation of the communal grave, it was possible to establish the individual identification of these five members, namely, Flight Sergeants Flohm and Bull, and Sergeants Metcalfe, Norman and Briggs, and their remains were re-interred in the Bad Toelz (Durnbach) British Militiary Cemetery, located 28 miles south of Munich, Germany.  Regretfully all efforts by the Missing, Research Unit to find any trace of his remains proved unsuccessful.  It can only be concluded, therefore, that the severeity of the expolsion and ensuing fire was such as to render impossible the recovery of this remains.