The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (415291) Pilot Officer Richard Robert Whitaker, No. 196 Squadron RAF, Second World War

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Andrew Smith, the story for this day was on (415291) Pilot Officer Richard Robert Whitaker, No. 196 Squadron RAF, Second World War.

415291 Pilot Officer Richard Robert Whitaker, No. 196 Squadron RAF
KIA 6 September 1943
Photograph: P08698.001

Story delivered 1 June 2014

Today we remember and pay tribute to Pilot Officer Richard Robert Whitaker.

Richard Whitaker, known as Bob, was born in Geraldton, Western Australia, on 27 September 1918. The eldest son of Richard and Lilian Whitaker, he grew up in the western suburbs of Perth. After leaving school he worked as a clerk for the firm W. Drabble Limited before becoming a shipping clerk with the Orient Steam Navigation Company in Perth.

Bob Whitaker enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 17 August 1941 and began an extended period of training in Australia to become a pilot. He achieved his flying badge on 14 April 1942, and just under a month later married Margaret Thomas. Three months after his wedding he left Australia for service overseas.

Whitaker was posted to No. 196 Squadron of the British Royal Air Force. This squadron had been a training unit in the First World War, and was reformed in November 1942 to act as a night bomber unit in Bomber Command for the Second World War. The squadron flew a number of sorties in Wellington bombers against enemy ports and industrial centres in Europe before being re-equipped with Stirling bombers.

On 6 September 1943 Pilot Officer Bob Whitaker was the only Australian in a crew of eight of Stirling 111 EE.964. They were part of an operation against Mannheim in Germany, and took off at 8 pm. The aircraft was not heard from again.

The rear gunner of the Stirling, Sergeant R.A. Newman, was made a prisoner of war in Germany. He reported that at around 1 am the bomber crashed near the village of Bachenau. Newman was the only one able to successfully bail out of the aircraft as it went down. The seven killed in the accident, including Pilot Officer Whitaker, were buried in the local cemetery in a communal grave.

After the war the remains of Whitaker and his comrades were exhumed and reinterred separately next to each other in the Bad Toelz British Cemetery, 28 miles south of Munich. Bob Whitaker was sadly missed by his family at home, who wrote that they would always remember him smiling. He was 24 years old.

His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with around 40,000 others from the Second World War, and his photograph is displayed beside the Pool of Reflection.

This is but one of the many stories of courage and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Pilot Officer Richard Robert Whitaker, and all of those Australians who have given their lives in the service of our nation.