Does anyone know if there is any casualty listing available for the 89 LAA Battery covering the time the unit was deployed near Palembang I airfield in southern Sumatra? Peter Boer
There are some threads here that might help: 1) Royal Artillery Structure Post 16 may be important 2) Help needed with 35th and 21st Lt. AA Regts? Includes a short history 3) 35th Regt LAA Who went to Sumatra? Elsewhere: Java Gunners | COFEPOW 6th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery - Wikipedia Barton-George-Henry-William 78th 35th LAA Royal Artillery https://www.britishmilitaryhistory....es/124/2019/12/Singapore-Fortress-1941-42.pdf Enough to start with! Good luck.
Thank you David, but had already checked and found no casualty listing for the Palembang period. I also checked Dutch records but they only have a report by LCol Baillie of 6 HAA Reg which lists only numbers of casualties of 12 and 15 HAA Batteries. I am trying to finalise the manuscript of a book, titled The battle for Palembang 14-15 February 1942, with a very detailed text based on British, Dutch and Japanese sources. Trying to find at least some casualty numbers of the LAA units attached to 6 HAA Reg (minus) in Palembang. Have already studied casualties of 12 and 15 HAA Batteries with much help from Patrick Walker. Peter Boer
Peter, I am very conscious that I am telling you nothing new. Both 78 and 89 Batteries of 35th Regiment were attached to 6th HAA. 78 Battery (Maj Cutbush) and B Troop (Lt James) of 89 Battery proceeded to Palembang and were at the airfields and oil refineries. 89 Battery (BHQ with A and C Troops) followed some days later from Singapore but were sunk en route so were not involved in the battle. All bar one L/Bdr were saved and were taken to Oesthaven though I think a few may have been landed at Palembang. As to casualties I have never found anything definitive. The 89 Battery Roll from the BRE at Changi has only two shown as wounded and then only in the context of 'last seen wounded' and the Roll does not subdivide to Troops. Nevil Benham (78 Bty) in this article Sumatra refers to one man being shot in the arm. From this article it would also appear that the gunners of 6 HAA and 35 LAA became mixed up so I'm wondering whether Lt Col Baillie's casualty figures are for 6 HAA and attached personnel of 35 LAA. Very much look forward to reading your book when it comes out. Tim
How about: Second Lieutenant Stanley Arthur Gordon Gray | War Casualty Details | CWGC From 35th LAA and buried post-war in Singapore. CWGC appear not to have anyone listed, apart from him.
Lt Gray was killed 14/2/42 by shell fire near Fort Canning, Singapore whilst attached to AAD. Originally buried in Old Portuguese Cemetery. Tim
Thank you Tim and David. I heard of the one shot in an arm but this happened at Pladjoe. M. Taute (at the time CO of a RAF ground defence section) said in an interview that in the AA area to the south of PI with the Troop of 89 Battery there were one killed (perhaps 2LT Gray??) and some wounded when the breach of a Bofors gun blew up and there were some KIA when the Japanese shortly occupied a Bofors emplacement near the dispersal area in the SE. He estimated the number of KIA and MIA of the LAA units at c. six. in total. I am certain that Baillie only mentioned the 6 HAA Reg men KIA, MIA and wounded. For example the numbers of KIA on 14 February 1942 at PI he gives in his Report are the same numbers (one officer and 16 other ranks) you can find in Appendice F of the book of Patrick Walker pp 319-321 and 325. Peter Boer
My manuscript 'The Battle for Palembang 14-15 February 1942' is finally ready and with the publisher (Batavian Lion International, Amsterdam/Berlin). It will be published mid 2022 if all goes as planned. Thank you all for your most appreciated help via this site or directly. Found that the story of the gun crew KIA when a Bofors site of B Troop 89 LAA Battery was shortly conquered is just a hoax. The gun plus a tractor-truck were shot to pieces by a 3.7-inch gun but was unmanned at the time as it was to be repositioned. If there were any casualties it was a Driver only. Peter Boer
Finally there. For those members who are interested, published a few weeks ago by Bataafsche Leeuw/Batavian Lion International, Amsterdam: P.C. Boer, PhD and R. Enthoven, MA, The Battle for Palembang, 14-15 February 1942, ISBN 978 90 6707 737 8. (Hard cover, 148 pag. with some 64 photo's and other ill.). Peter Boer
For those members who want to order the book using English instead of a site in Dutch only, it is now possible to order by email to: info@aviationmegastore.com Just say you want to order (the book is not in their listings yet) and cite the data above about the book. There will, no doubt, be some additional costs for packaging and postal service. Peter Boer
Thanks Orwell 1984! Already busy again. Am writing a new text for an updated 2nd edition of my 2016 book Aircraft of the Netherlands East Indies Army Air Corps in crisis and war times, February 1937-June 1942. Peter
Peter, my name is Gareth Burnell and I am researching Lieutenant Dennis Wilfred Wilkinson who died on Feb.14 1942. He was in the 6HAA but I don’t know which Battery. I suspect 15, based on Sumatra, but am only going by the numbers who died on the 14th, perhaps in a firefight with the Japanese at Pladjoe? I am desperate to know how he died, as I indirectly owe my existence to his death, his father having professionally ‘adopted’ my father in memory of his lost son.
According to the book '6th Heavy Anti Aircraft Regiment RA' by Patrick Walker, Lt Wilkinson was in 3rd Battery and died in Singapore 14 Feb 42. To quote from the book "It was while holding these trenches that during an air raid they received a direct hit which killed several men. Lt Barney and Gnrs Morgan WC, Mercer W and Jones N were killed. Lt Wilkinson DW was severely wounded from shrapnel and blast effects. He had to be rapidly evacuated from the position towards a first aid post further down the Pasir Panjang road but had been mortally wounded." Tim
Tim, I can’t thank you enough for finding this for me. My hoped-for copy of that book has been lost in transit from the US. Dennis Wilkinson was one of 3 brothers to attend a school where I taught, Gresham’s, in Norfolk, UK. By the time he died, his elder brother, John, also a gunner, was a POW, having been captured in the retreat to Dunkirk, and his younger brother, Peter, was about to leave school to become an airborne gunner. He was to be awarded an immediate MC in Italy in 1943 and was later to fight at Arnhem. Their father, Frederick, offered to sponsor my father (then 17 and about to enter the RNVR) through his articles as a Chartered Accountant, in memory of his lost son, Dennis, and my father and Peter studied together, in the family firm of Wilkinson and Mellor, when they were demobbed in 1946. John was a POW for the duration and suffered in one of the Long Marches, to the extent that he died at the early age of 38. Peter lived to 94 (my father, 82). Thank you again; I shall now concentrate my research on 3 battery.
