Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Flying Officer Patrick Leo McCartin was born in Geelong, Victoria on 7 December 1915. He was known as “Leo”, after his uncle Leo Aloysius McCartin, who was serving on Gallipoli at the time of his birth and was killed in action in France in 1918.

As a young man McCartin attended St Mary’s Boys’ School in Geelong. Prior to his enlistment in the Royal Australian Air Force on 18 July 1942 McCartin worked as a school teacher.

In March 1943 he embarked for overseas service from Melbourne. As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, Wilson was one of almost 16,000 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined Royal Air Force squadrons in Britain throughout the course of the war.

Arriving in England via Canada in August 1943, McCartin undertook further specialist training before being posted a year later to No. 75 (NZ) Squadron, Royal Air Force.

Known as the “New Zealand Squadron”, No. 75 (NZ) Squadron was part of Bomber Command and was equipped with the four-engine Avro Lancaster heavy bomber.

Over the following months McCartin flew a total of 23 operations with the squadron. On the night of 20 November 1944, the Lancaster in which McCartin was pilot was shot down during a raid near Homberg in Germany.

The only survivor, Flight Sergeant Gray, managed to bail out and was taken prisoner. The other six, including four British crew and Australians Leo McCartin and Flight Sergeant Phillip Francis Smith, were officially listed as missing. Later enquiries confirmed that they had all been killed.

McCartin was 28 years old. His body is buried in the British and Commonwealth Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Kleve, Germany.