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Australia

A SQN in Syria

A Short Sunderland Mk.III (EK573/P) of No. 10 Squadron RAAF on the water after alighting to rescue 3 survivors from a Vickers Wellington of No. 172 Squadron RAF, clinging to a one-man dinghy (seen at right) after being shot down in the Bay of Biscay while attacking a German submarine on 26 August 1944. Although it was forbidden for flying boats to alight on the open sea in rescue attempts, the pilot of the Sunderland, Flight Lieutenant W.B. Tilley, decided the survivors could wait no longer for surface craft to arrive, and touched down to pick them up for a safe return to Mount Batten, Devon (UK). A fourth member of the Wellington crew, Flying Officer R.B. Gray RCAF, refused to risk the lives of the other survivors by overloading the dinghy, although he was seriously injured. He succumbed during their fifteen-hour ordeal at sea and was awarded a posthumous George Cross. The pilot of the Sunderland of No. 10 Squadron RAAF who made the hazardous sea landing and take-off was Flight Lieutenant William Boris Tilley DFC of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia).

We are so Proud of Clive R.I.P.a light horseman who died in the trenches with a sniper bullet to the heart, trying to save one of his platoon mates....never to return home to his Family. Died for Freedom and Honour.

Flying Officer Jack Brittain

Two 11 Squadron Catalinas over Lake Macquarie in NSW. Rathmines, on the edge of the lake, was a key base and depot for Australia's maritime patrol assets.

Reginald Francis GRIMLEY

Studio portrait of 874 Private Joseph Archdall Beacom, 15th Battalion of Barrengarry, NSW. Son of John Beacom and Elizabeth Chittick (formerly Beacom). A farmer prior to enlisting, he embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Ceramic (A40) on 22 December 1914. He was killed in action on 10 August 1916 in France, aged 31. He has no known grave, and is remembered with honour on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, France. His brother 4078 Private David Beacom was killed in action 5 days earlier.

A diagram of the Barrage Plan for the Australian Corps advance. The barrage was fired on preset timings without the benefit of radio communications so advancing troops had to be careful not to get too close to, or be left behind by the line of the creeping barrage. The level of complexity of such a plan epitomises the sophistication of Artillery by this stage of the war. Each battery of guns would be using different firing data on a relentless schedule from their many and varied locations in order to achieve this effect on the ground.

Positions of forces at dusk on October 31, 1917, during the Battle of Beersheba at the time of the charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade. British forces are shown in red, Turkish forces are shown in blue. The position reached by the regiments of the 4th Light Horse Brigade after the attack is shown in pale red. Note: there is no evidence that the 4th Light Horse Regiment crossed the Wadi Saba during their attack, nor that the 60th Division attacked south of the Wadi Saba. The Australian Mounted Division headquarters is shown where the Anzac Mounted Division headquarters moved to, after the capture of Tel el Saba. Neither the Gullett map nor Bou's map locates the headquarters of Anzac Mounted Division, Australian Mounted Division and Desert Mounted Corps at Kashim Zanna despite numemrous sources placing them there. [Preston 1921 pp. 25–6, Powles 1922 pp. 136–7, Hill 1978 p. 126]

No 156 Squadron May 1943 at RAF Warboys, CO WCDR Rivett-Carnac

433549 FSGT Len Henderson 463 SQN

PRIVATE: Albert Ernest WORRALL; 1906-42, at Age: 36yrs. Military: 2nd Australian Imperial Force - Australian Army - WWII - 2nd/29th Australian Infantry Battalion. Origin of Portrait: (AWM) Australian War Memorial; Accession No: P02784.025.

A posed photograph of de Havilland DH 5 Scout plane (Serial A 9242) of 68 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps (renumbered as No 2 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps from 19 January 1918) at an aerodrome in Lincolnshire, England, with 24 year old Cootamundra born Lieutenant Sydney Winton Ayers in the cockpit. Ayers was later shot down on 22 November 1917 over Bourlou Wood while ground strafing German troops and positions in support of the tank-assisted Cambrai attack - he died of his wounds two days later. The same month this image was taken, Ayers' brother, Private Charles Thomas Ayers of 58 Battalion, was killed at Polygon Wood. The legend painted down the right side of the DH5 scout indicates it was a presentation aircraft, paid for by subscriptions and fund-raising in Australia. This particular aircraft, 'New South Wales no 14' (also known as The Women's Battleplane) was presented on 12 April 1917 to 68 Squadron by 'the women of New South Wales and others', who raised 2,700 pounds. Notable amongst the subscribers were the Tweed and Armidale Battleplane Funds. Generally disliked by pilots for its lack of performance, vibration, and tendency to shed valves, the DH5 was being replaced by the SE5a by the end of 1917. See also A02177.

Kenneth Roy "Curly" McPherson, 13th Field Ambulance

This aircraft, restored to non-flying status and formerly located at the Parafield Fighting Jets Museum in South Australia is a Bell P39 Airacobra of 82 Squadron (although it is wearing 24 Squadron codes - part of a flight detached to 82 Squadron) as it was when it was written off in a forced landing near Bulli in NSW in June 1943. The aircraft has sine been sold to aviation interests in Russia, where Airacobras served with great distinction in WW2. Airacobras were operated in limited numbers (22 in all) by the RAAF as a stop-gap in defence of cities on the eastern seaboard. Some are believed to have been used as training aircraft at Mount Gambier in SA. The Airacobra had some unique features which are shown in this image via open hatches. Most notable at first glance, it had a tricycle undercarriage, the engine was centre mounted, behind the pilot, driving a transmission shaft between the pilots feet to the propellor. This gave a lot of room up front for a very heavy nose armament comprising 1 x 20mm cannon (a 37mm cannon in some variants) firing through the propeller hub and two .50 calibre guns in the nose and one in each wing. While not highly regarded in the Pacific theatre, the most prolific user was the Soviet airforce who were provided large numbers under the Lend Lease Agreements. The Russians loved them, particularly as tank attack aircraft. They were replaced in Australian service by the ubiquitous Curtiss P40 Kittyhawk.

AWM caption : Fenton, NT. 1945-03. An informal group portrait of a crew of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber aircraft of No. 21 Squadron RAAF, standing beside their aircraft. Left to right: Flight Sergeant (Flt Sgt) P. Rousseau of Darling Point, NSW Flt Sgt D. W. Johnston of Kogarah, NSW Flying Officer (FO) H. A. Seymour of Coogee, NSW Sergeant (Sgt) F. A. Dean of Brighton, Vic Flt Sgt W. C. Randall of North Sydney FO C. L. Henry of Ivanhoe, Vic Pilot Officer R. W. Brooks of Coogee, NSW Flt Sgt R. W. McLeod of Northcote, Vic Flt Sgt W. H. Storey of Bexley, NSW Sgt R. H. Brown of Allora, Qld Flight Lieutenant R. W. Court of Collaroy, NSW

Bellicourt Cemetery

Men of an Anti Tank Company at Tobruk; The 2nd/3rd Anti Tank Regiment and the 24th and 26th Anti Tanl Companis served at Tobruk.

RAAF Crest

5110 PTE John HIRD

Studio portrait of 2304 Private (Pte) Albert Dunster, 39th Battalion. A farmer prior to enlisting on 29 June 1916, Pte Dunster embarked for overseas service in October 1916. He was wounded on 30 April 1917 and died later that day. Pte Dunster is buried at Trois Arbres cemetery, Steernwerck, France.

Newspaper article detailing Tom Flynn's tragic demise

Sister M Hall, Moonee Ponds Baby Health Centre, 1950

2/4 Australian General Hospital, Labuan, Borneo 1945

North Africa Western Desert - A Tomahawk aircraft of No. 3 Squadron RAAF being re-armed before another sortie. Image made by George Silk

Far and away: The young Private Bill Cassidy spent five of the eight years of his marriage away at war.

Morphettville Camp in 1915 (i.e. after Cowper passed through).

Colonel Harold Jacobs, Senator Anne Rushton, Allen Day (95), Brian Coleman (94), Hans de Vries (a few days short of his 94th birthday), Leesa Vlahos and Fred Pelder at the B25 unveiling at Parafield Airport South Australia.

The ubiquitous DH 82 Tiger Moth, backbone of the Empire Air Training Scheme and the aircraft in which Tom Tobin learned to fly. http://www.stephanschutze.com/uploads/3/1/0/6/3106267/1942_tigermoth_01.jpg

William Smith's trench art

A 4.5 inch howitzer of 108th Howitzer Battery of the 8th FIeld Artillery Brigade deployed in line behind a dyke or elevated road which provides them with cover from fire and view by the enemy

No. 625 Squadron, RAF based in Yorkshire. Flying Officer Ian Denver, DFC, RAAF, front row, fourth from left. He is wearing the distinctive darker blue uniform of the RAAF in WW2. Denver and his crew flew 16 missions before being transferred to No. 156 (Pathfinder) Squadron, where they flew a further 32 together.

FSgt George Hale, 77 Squadron, and his aircraft "Halestorm", one of very few Meteor pilots to get the better of the Mig 15s over Korea. The effect of the muzzle blast from the two 20mm cannon mounted either side of the nose is clearly evident.

Japanese pilots of the Japanese Navy Tainan Air Group assigned to New Guinea from February 1942 - Saburo Sakai seated middle row second from left - one of the top Japanese Ace of the war who in 1997 lobbied the Australian Government to recognise Warren Cowan's actions on 1942. Standing top row left is PO1/c Hiroyoshi Nishizawa who went on to become the top Japanese Ace. He was killed as a passenger in a transport aircraft over the Philippines in 1944. Sakai survived the war having lost an eye over Guadalcanal. He passed away in 2000.

Australian delegates at the Japanese surrender ceremony on board USS Missouri. Left to right: (back row) Captain J. Balfour; Lieutenant Colonel D. H. Dwyer; Air Vice Marshal G. Jones; Lieutenant General F. H. Berryman; Commodore J. A. Collins. Front row: Rear Admiral G. Moore; General Sir Thomas Blamey (who signed for Australia) and Air Vice Marshal W. D. Bostock.

Possibly one of the most recognised photos of the AIF on the Western Front. Lieutenant Rupert Frederick Arding Downes MC addresses his Platoon from B Company, 29th Battalion on 8 August 1918 during a rest before the advance onto Harbonnieres, the battalion's second objective. They are near the villages of Warfusee and Lamotte, France. The background of the photograph is obscured by the smoke of heavy shellfire. Many of the men pictured were killed in action or died of wounds or disease in the days and weeks after the photograph was taken, being amongst the last Australian deaths during the First World War. Each man has a story. Pte Towers (fourth from right), for example, was a farm labourer of Cootamundra, NSW, who later transferred to the 32nd Battalion. He was admitted to the Abbeville Hospital on 9 November 1918 suffering broncho-pneumonia where he died on 11 November 1918.

AWM P04630.001

"We have not forgot you Cobber" inscription on 1036 Pte Samuel RIDLER's grave at Pheasant Wood Cemetery, Fromelles

Australian Army Nursing Sisters Ellen Keats and Elizabeth Pyman. Ellen Keats was evacuated from Singapore on the ill-fated SS VYner Brooke and was murdered by her Japanese captros at Banka Island. Sister Pyman was more fortunate being evacuated on another ship and returning safely to Australia

Eric Abraham, Howard Pope, Charlie Mance Ted Smout at the internment of PTE Russell Bosisto, Courcelette Cemetery

Group portrait of trainee pilots of No 1 Flying Training School A Course, January to October 1939. Left to right, back row: 467 Robert Thomas Trigg of Sale, Vic, (later 32 Squadron (Sqn) RAAF, died 6 July 1942); Robert John Ohlmeyer of Clare, SA, (later 3 Sqn RAAF, died 23 November 1939);M L 'Buck' Judell; Edwin Hooper Sargeant; E H Williams; John Henry William Saunders (later 3 Sqn RAAF, died 22 November 1941); Kevin Ansell Goman of Perth, WA (later 23 Sqn RAAF, died 29 May 1940); 484 Brian Leighton Bracegirdle; 475 Robert George Arnold of Lameroo, SA (died 18 January 1942); 467 John Thomas O'Brien; 468 Geoffrey Thompson Newstead of Renmark, SA; W C Ring; 457 Geoffrey William Coventry (later Sqn Leader and Commanding Officer 11 Sqn RAAF, died 2 May 1944); 250499 Herbert Alexander Gamble. Second row: 485 Reginald Lloyd Gordon (later 31 Sqn RAAF, died 27 February 1944); 481 Peter St George Bruce Turnbull (died 27 August 1942); 456 Lindsay Eric Shaw Knowles of Canberra, ACT (later 3 Sqn RAAF, died 22 November 1941); 465 Kevin Herbert Springbett of SA; 470 John Couper Black; 388 Patrick John McMahon; 472 William Eldridge Willard of Sydney, NSW (later 31 Sqn RAAF, died 30 August 1943); 394 Garth Tetley Miles; 3107 Vernon Francis Wilfred Sullivan of Carlton, Vic; 482 John William Kessey of Hamilton, NSW; G L Thurston; R H Thompson; B M H Palmer. Front row: 477 Reginald William Marks; 480 Desmond Charles Pfeiffer; 477 Edwin St Clair Yeoman of Camberwell, Vic (later 10 Sqn RAAF, died 8 August 1942); 390 David Vernon of Lane Cove, NSW; James Norman Alexander of Randwick NSW (later 1 Aircraft Depot (1AD), died 15 January 1940); 391 Athol Galway Hope Wearne of WA; 305 James Cecil Stevenson of Grafton, NSW (later Wing Commander, 1AD, died on 1 December 1942); 3229 Allan Lindsay May of Malvern, Vic (later 1AD, died 10 May 1940); 463 Victor Allan Hodgkinson; 483 Arthur Wichelo Nichols of Wagin, WA; 387 Hugh Augustine Conaghan; 474 Robert Andrew Kirkman; 455 Charles Edwin Cox.

Commissioned by the 2/24th Australian Infantry Battalion Association Inc. as part of the Australian War Memorial’s Plaque Dedication Program.

The entrance to Becourt Military cemetery

A Boulton-Paul Defiant of 153 Squadron in daylight colour scheme clearly showing the aircraft's most distinctive feature - the four gun turret. While initially conferring a tactical advantage, its weight later proved an insurmountable handicap. Image http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/Mk1_Defiant.jpg

Prowse Point Cemetery taken from its neighbour Mud Corner

Mustang IIIbs of 19 Squadron April 1944. These aircraft have the 'Maxwell Hood' derived from the Spitfire to give better vision than the standard P51B/C Mustang.