Informal portrait of 255057 Pilot Officer (PO) Stanley Alfred Deacon, 20 Sqn RAAF of Preston, ...

Informal portrait of 255057 Pilot Officer (PO) Stanley Alfred Deacon, 20 Sqn RAAF of Preston, Victoria, and his mother, Myrtle Olga Deacon. A 19 year old engineering student at the University of Melbourne prior to enlistment on 20 September 1941, PO Deacon was promoted to Flying Officer (FO) soon after this photograph was taken. On 8 March 1943, FO Deacon was serving as radio operator aboard Catalina aircraft A24-22 when it took off from Cairns at night to undertake operations in the Pacific. Several hours after refuelling in New Guinea, the aircraft relayed a signal stating "On fire. Forced to land. 30 miles south-east of Gasmata". Despite extensive searches around the New Britain area to locate the aircraft and its crewmembers, the nine men were eventually reported as officially missing. FO Deacon has no known grave and is commemorated on the Rabaul Memorial, New Britain. An inscription in the Memorial states; "Ad majorem dei gloriam. In this place are recorded the names of officers and men of the British Commonwealth of Nations who died during the 1939-1945 war in the New Britain area, on land, at sea and in the air, but to whom the fortunes of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death".