The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (413890) Flight Sergeant Harry Harcourt Petersen, No. 460 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, 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 Richard Cruise, the story for this day was on (413890) Flight Sergeant Harry Harcourt Petersen, No. 460 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, Second World War.

413890 Flight Sergeant Harry Harcourt Petersen, No. 460 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force
KIA 16 December 1943
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 6 December 2015

Today we pay tribute to Flight Sergeant Harry Harcourt Petersen, who was killed on active service with the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War.

Born in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville on 5 February 1920, Harry Petersen was the son of John and Catherine Petersen, but grew up as a foster-son to Emma Martin of Forbes, New South Wales.

Petersen enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 13 September 1941, and began training as a wireless operator and air gunner. Before long he embarked for overseas service. As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, Harcourt was one of almost 27,500 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined squadrons based in Britain throughout the course of the war.

In Britain Petersen undertook further specialist training before being posted to No. 460 Squadron. This would become the most highly decorated Australian squadron in Bomber Command, as well as the squadron that suffered the highest casualties. Flying twin-engine Vickers Wellington medium bombers and the four-engine Avro Lancaster heavy bomber, the squadron lost more than 1,000 men: Australian, British, Canadian, New Zealander, and South African. Almost 600 Australians from No. 460 Squadron are listed here on the Roll of Honour.

On the night of 16 December 1943 Petersen participated in a large raid on Berlin. Flying back, the Lancaster in which Petersen was wireless operator/air gunner ran into bad weather. Having circled No. 460 Squadron’s home station of Binbrook in heavy fog and low cloud, the aircraft crashed near the village of Market Stainton in Lincolnshire.

Petersen and all six of his crewmates – fellow Australians Captain Francis Randall, Flying Officer Harold Dedman, Flight Sergeant William Halstead, Flight Sergeant Charles Howie, and Flight Sergeant Reginald Moynagh, as well as British crewmate Jack McKenzie – were killed in the crash. In a funeral held later that month the crew were buried side by side in the Cambridge City Cemetery.

Harry Petersen was 23 years old.

In a letter home to the families, the commander of No. 460 Squadron wrote that the unit had lost one of its best crews.

Bomber Command squadrons suffered heavy losses during that night’s raid owing to enemy action and bad weather, and the date became known as “Black Thursday”. It is this operation that is featured in the Memorial’s Striking by night exhibition in Anzac Hall.

Petersen’s name – alongside those of his Australian crewmates – is listed here on the Roll of Honour on my left, among the nearly 40,000 other Australians who died serving in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Flight Sergeant Harry Harcourt Petersen, and all of those Australians – as well as our Allies and brothers in arms – who gave their lives in the hope of a better world.

Dr Lachlan Grant
Historian, Military History Section