Samuel William CLIFFORD

CLIFFORD, Samuel William

Service Number: 677
Enlisted: 2 November 1938
Last Rank: Flying Officer
Last Unit: No. 13 Squadron (RAAF)
Born: Coburg, Victoria, Australia , 4 February 1917
Home Town: Werribee, Wyndham, Victoria
Schooling: Frankston District High School, Frankston, Victoria, Australia
Occupation: Farming (Father's Farm)
Died: Flying Battle, Laha, Ambon, Netherlands East Indies, 12 January 1942, aged 24 years
Cemetery: No known grave - "Known Unto God"
Commemorated ~ Column 8, Ambon Memorial, Maluku, Indonesia.
Memorials: Ambon Memorial, Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour
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World War 2 Service

2 Nov 1938: Enlisted Royal Australian Air Force, Flying Officer, 677
3 Sep 1939: Involvement Flying Officer, 677
7 Oct 1941: Transferred Royal Australian Air Force, Flying Officer, No. 13 Squadron (RAAF)

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Biography contributed by Stephen Bonald

Extract from Gillison, D.N. (Douglas Napier) (254475) Royal Australian Air Force 1939-1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1962 – Page 307

At dawn on 12th January the Allied air attacks on the enemy forces invading Celebes were resumed. On their way to Menado five Hudsons from Namlea were intercepted by three enemy float-planes and five Zeros the first of these Japanese fighters to be reported in the area. The Zero pilots immediately turned the tables on the Hudson crews. In unequal combat, the details of which were never recorded, the (No. 2 Squadron) aircraft piloted by Flight Lieutenant Parker Henry Russell Hodge (451) and Flying Officer Peter Creighton Gorrie (407168) were both shot down from between 6,000 and 10,000 feet. Two other Hudsons, piloted by Flight Lieutenant Geoffrey Sattler (260510) and Flight Lieutenant Arthur Robert Barton (270525), failed to return and their crews were later listed as “presumed lost”. The only aircraft of the flight to return was that piloted by Flight Lieutenant Robert Wylie Burns Cuming (200540) who reported having seen the Hudsons flown by Hodge and Gorrie shot down. When, half an hour later, those captained by Sattler and Barton had not returned, permission was given to the base operators to break wireless silence in an endeavour to call them up. There was a prompt reply, in good signals procedure, informing the base that the pilots had no message for them. That reply, if in fact it did come from either of the two missing crews, was the last the squadron heard of them.

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