William Gove
William Julius Henderson Gove (* 1922 in Melbourne , Victoria , Australia ; † April 20, 1943 , near Milingimbi , Northern Territory , Australia) was an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II who had a fatal accident while on duty.
Life
Like his father, the student Gove signed up for service in the Australian Air Force (RAAF) at the outbreak of World War II. His relatively poor health forced him to abandon the pilot training he had begun. Instead, he trained in navigation , which he completed with the rank of Sergeant Navigator. He married in 1942 and the young family moved to Toorak , near Melbourne.
Gove was posted to the Second Squadron of the Australian Air Force in the Northern Territory in 1942, which was stationed in Batchelor, Australia . There, south of Darwin (Australia) , in the first nine months he completed 600 hours of combat and observation of the armed forces of the Japanese Empire , which in 1941/1942 covered all of Southeast Asia , the Dutch East Indies , what is now Indonesia , and a large part of New Guinea , Melanesia and Polynesia and were a threat to Australia.
On April 20, 1943, Gove and his crew took off with his Lockheed Hudson after a refueling stop at the Milingimbi landing site together with a second Hudson from his squadron. After a few minutes, an explosion was heard over the radio link. Both planes crashed, killing their crews with them. Presumably the two Hudsons had collided in the clouds.
Gove and the other victims were first buried on Raibuma Island but were reburied in the Adelaide River War Cemetery, south of Darwin. She is commemorated in the Australian War Memorial in the capital Canberra .
Post fame
Already during the World War, victims of the Australian and US armed forces in northern Australia were honored by naming airstrips, airfields and other military facilities after them. Accordingly, a new air force base at Melville Bay Gove Base was named. After the base was closed in August 1945, the name was retained and today the entire peninsula is called Gove Peninsula .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ [1] ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Australian War Memorial website
- ^ The Arnhem Courier , Volume 9, Issue 40, April 23, 1993
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gove, William |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gove, William Julius Henderson |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian Air Force pilot in World War II |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1922 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Melbourne , Victoria (Australia) , Australia |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 20, 1943 |
| Place of death | near Milingimbi , Northern Territory , Australia |