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Extract from: High in the Sunlit Silence, Tony Vine, Vivid Publishing 2017 - Submitted by author

Pilot Officer John William Taylor
 

John Taylor was a nineteen-year-old gardener from Dubbo, NSW when he enlisted in the RAAF in September 1941. The son of John and Winifred Stella Taylor (née Larcombe), John grew up in Dubbo, where his father was a butcher. In June 1941, along with John senior, he enlisted in the 54th Battalion of the Militia.

After completing his initial training at 2 ITS at Bradfield Park,  where he received three days’ punishment confined to base for missing a parade, John commenced flying training on 11 November at RAAF Narromine as a member of Pilots’ Course 20. On completion of this training, John was selected to travel to Canada to qualify as a pilot. After a brief leave in Dubbo, he boarded the SS President Monroe in Sydney to sail for San Francisco on 24 April 1942.

In Canada, John trained at 10 SFTS in Dauphin, Manitoba on the Cessna Crane twin-engine aircraft. He accumulated over 150 flying hours before he graduated as a pilot on 25 September 1942; he was promoted to sergeant on that same day. John, along with fourteen other Narromine men who graduated that day, were told they were to proceed to the United Kingdom to conduct further training to become heavy-bomber pilots. After a short leave, he embarked on the RMS Queen Elizabeth in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He sailed on 31 October and disembarked in Greenock, Scotland on 4 November. He then travelled overnight by train to 11 PDRC in Bournemouth.

At 11 PDRC, John was kitted out for UK conditions and received lectures from men who had already completed tours in operational squadrons. He also received a short period of leave. On 31 December, John and the majority of his cohort were posted to RAF Shawbury to commence advanced flying training to bridge the gap between the skills they had acquired on their service flying course in Dauphin and what was needed to commence operational training on larger aircraft. John completed this training in late March 1943 and proceeded to 14 OTU at RAF Cottesmore, Rutland.

At 14 OTU, John selected a crew of four Englishmen, F-O George McCleave (N)[1], Joe Clarke (BA),[2] Sgt George Bell (WO/AG)[3] and Hugh Purdy (AG),[4] along with a fellow Australian, Jim Sheridan, RAAF (AG).[5] The men completed their operational training at Cottesmore on the Wellington bomber before proceeding to 1654 HCU at RAF Wigsley, Nottinghamshire to convert to the Lancaster bomber. The final member of the crew, the flight engineer Sgt Phil Roberts, RAFVR,[6] would join them there.

The conversion training took four weeks. In early August, John and his crew joined No. 106 Squadron RAF at nearby RAF Syerston. 106 Squadron had commenced the war flying the Hampton bomber, and, after a short period using Manchesters, had converted to early variants of the Lancaster in 1942. In 1943, it took part in raids against Friedrichshafen, La Spezia and the famous attack on Peenemünde on the German Baltic coast. The crew joined the squadron at the height of the bomber campaign against Germany and immediately thrown into the melee.

On 5 September, John and his crew took off from Syerston at 1950, just on sunset, on an operation to the city of Mannheim in the heart of industrial Germany.

John’s Lancaster was shot down, possibly by anti-aircraft fire, near Sandhofen, fifteen kilometres north of Mannheim on the banks of the Rhine. John and all of his crew were killed. Six of the men’s bodies were recovered from the wreck. The body of the seventh, rear gunner Jim Sheridan, washed ashore in the Ludwigshafen area a few days later.

At 0930 on 8 September in far away Dubbo, Winifred received a telegram from RAAF Headquarters advising her that her son John was missing. Over the following weeks, letters from his commanding officer arrived, giving her false hope that he may have survived and become a POW. It was not until May 1944 that she was officially told that John was now presumed killed on the 5 September 1943.

The crash appears to have occurred close to midnight on 5–6 September, with the RAAF and Commonwealth War Graves Commission recording that John was killed on the 5th but that the remainder of the crew were deemed to have died on the 6th.

The men were buried in a large plot containing ninety-two British personnel in the Mannheim Parish Cemetery. After the war, the men were exhumed and, where possible, identified, before being reburied in the Durnbach Commonwealth War Cemetery. The average age of John’s crew was just was twenty-one.

Formal identification of John’s body was not completed until 1948. The Graves Registration Team noted that most of the men had had their identification removed. In John’s case, however, his body was found wearing his identity discs and a bracelet engraved with his name. Both items were later returned to Australia. His records note that the decision was made at RAAF Headquarters in Melbourne that their condition was such that they should not be returned to his family.

John died wearing the rank of flight sergeant, not knowing that he had been commissioned as a pilot officer, backdated to 13 July 1943.

Pilot Officer John William Taylor, RAAF is buried alongside his crew in the Durnbach Commonwealth War Cemetery in Germany.

[1] F-O George Richard McCleave, 134062, RAFVR of Poole Dorsetshire. His brother F-Sgt Eric McCleave, 1324971 was killed serving with 518 Squadron.
[2] Sgt Joseph Gordon Clarke, 1230788, RAFVR; of Bradford, Yorkshire; KIA 6 Sep 1943, aged 20.
[3] Sgt George Hutchinson Bell, 1318653, RAFVR; of Harrow England; KIA 6 Sep 1943, aged 20.
[4] Sgt Hugh Patrick Purdy, 1613094, RAFVR; of Canvey Island, Essex, UK; KIA 6 Sep 1943, aged 27.
[5] Sgt James Patrick Sheridan, 425810; of Bundaberg Qld; b. Bundaberg, Qld, 15 Apr 1924; KIA 6 Sep 1943.
[6] Sgt Phillip Roberts, 1511208, RAFVR; KIA 6 Sep 1943, aged 23.