Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

In 1965, a 22-year-old driver for W.C. Cross and Sons walked into a Royal Australian Air Force recruiting office looking for steady work. He had earned his own way to that door. Duncan Glen McNair was born in Wonthaggi, Victoria, on 6 April 1943, a son of Arthur and Ethel McNair. His father died in 1962, he was estranged from his mother, and he had made a start as an apprentice plumber before taking up driving. On 23 August 1965, soon after his 22nd birthday, he enlisted in the RAAF.

The Air Force did not receive a model recruit. His early record carried repeated charges for indiscipline alongside his postings, including East Sale, where he worked on Vampire, Dakota and Macchi aircraft. The turn came in 1968. He joined No. 37 Armament Fitters course in January and completed it in May, and a supervisor recorded that he had “improved beyond all expectations”, in his outlook as much as his trade. His life outside the wire had turned the same way. He and his wife Janet welcomed a daughter, Judy Anne, in 1966 and a son, Glenn, in 1968, and the family made their home in Watson, in Canberra’s north. He qualified as a helicopter crewman, logging more than 60 hours on Iroquois with No. 5 Squadron, where his commanding officer noted that he had overcome early nervousness to reach a fully satisfactory standard. The men he flew with gave him a nickname that tells its own story about the airman he had become. They called him Mother.

In February 1970, McNair deployed to South Vietnam and joined No. 9 Squadron at Nui Dat, Phuoc Tuy Province, flying as a crewman on the squadron’s Iroquois helicopters in troop lift, resupply and medical evacuation.

On 3 July 1970, McNair was crewing Iroquois A2-768, callsign Albatross 01, on an ammunition resupply north of Nui Dat, with two other Albatross aircraft and two Bushranger gunships in support. The load was delivered. On departure, the pilot banked low to observe a suspicious person on the ground, and the aircraft struck an earth mound. The impact ruptured the fuel cell directly beneath McNair’s seat and the cabin caught fire. The other crew members got themselves clear of the burning aircraft. Two South Vietnamese soldiers carried McNair out in a fireman’s carry to the rescue helicopter, Albatross 02. He had suffered burns to more than 75 per cent of his body.

On 11 July 1970 he was moved to the 3rd US Field Hospital, Saigon. Evacuation to a specialist hospital in Japan was considered and ruled out; he was too ill to survive the flight. He could not be brought out of the war, so the RAAF flew his wife into it. On the night of 13 July 1970, Janet McNair left Canberra Airport with her brother, Ron McDonald of Melbourne, farewelled by Wing Commander J. H. Best of RAAF Base Fairbairn. The Canberra Times carried their photograph on page one the next morning. Janet reached her husband’s bedside in Saigon and was with him through his final days. Leading Aircraftman Duncan Glen McNair died of his burns on 20 July 1970, aged 27. The Australian War Memorial records him as the first RAAF airman to die as a result of operations in South Vietnam.

His body was returned to Victoria. He is buried at Springvale Botanical Cemetery, Melbourne, C.E. Bolingbroke Lawn, Row W, Grave 48. His name is on panel 6 of the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial, which has commemorated him at a Last Post Ceremony, and on Vietnam memorials in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. His headstone carries the words his family chose: “Forever loved and remembered by wife Jan, children Judy Anne and Glenn.” Judy Anne was four years old. Glenn was two.

Sources: AWM Roll of Honour (AWM153 Roll of Honour cards, Vietnam); AWM Last Post Ceremony for LAC D. G. McNair; No. 9 Squadron RAAF unit histories; The Canberra Times, 14 July 1970, p. 1; DVA Vietnam Nominal Roll; Springvale Botanical Cemetery records.

Lest we forget.

Rod Hutchings

OIC RAAF Media and Communications, History and Heritage Branch - Air Force