Studio portrait of 423597 Flight Sergeant (Flt Sgt) Gordon Arthur Armstrong of Sydney, NSW. An ...

Accession Number P07267.001
Collection type Photograph
Object type Black & white - Digital print
Maker Unknown
Place made Australia
Date made 1942
Conflict Second World War, 1939-1945
Copyright

Item copyright: Copyright expired - public domain

Public Domain Mark This item is in the Public Domain

Description

Studio portrait of 423597 Flight Sergeant (Flt Sgt) Gordon Arthur Armstrong of Sydney, NSW. An accountant before enlisting in July 1942, Flt Sgt Armstrong trained as a Bomb Aimer in Australia and Canada under the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS), and was posted to 77 Squadron RAF at Full Sutton, Yorkshire. Flt Sgt Armstrong was killed alongside his six other crew members on the night of 16/17 June 1944 when his Halifax III, serial number NA508, radio call-sign KN-A (A-Able) was hit with flack during an raid on the synthetic oil works at Sterkrade, Germany, and crashed in the marshy land at Amstelveen (Noord-Brabant), near Amsterdam, Holland. Aged 21 at the time of his death, he has no known grave. In June 1990, the wreckage of NA508 was uncovered by the Recovery Team of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, including the unidentified remains of five of the crew, who were later buried at Bergen op Zoom Canadian War Cemetery on 8 October 1991.