The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (411829) Sergeant John McDonald Rankin, 6 (Pilot) Advanced Flying Unit, Royal 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 Craig Berelle, the story for this day was on (411829) Sergeant John McDonald Rankin, 6 (Pilot) Advanced Flying Unit, Royal Air Force, Second World War.

411829 Sergeant John McDonald Rankin, 6 (Pilot) Advanced Flying Unit, Royal Air Force
Killed in flying accident 21 August 1942

Story delivered 21 August 2017

Today we pay tribute to Sergeant John McDonald Rankin.

John McDonald Rankin was born on 23 June 1917 in the town of Warwick, Queensland, to Donald and Ruby Rankin. He had two sisters, Mary and Helen.

Growing up, the young John Rankin attended Saint Ignatius at Riverview, in New South Wales.

Rankin enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 25 May 1941, and began training as a pilot, embarking for overseas service soon afterwards on 13 November 1941. After arriving in Britain, Rankin undertook further specialist training with No. 6 Pilot Advanced Flying Unit.

As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, Rankin was one of almost 27,500 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers, who, throughout the course of the war, joined squadrons based in Britain.

In the early hours of 21 August, Rankin was undertaking a night-time cross-country training exercise. Near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, the Airspeed Oxford training aircraft in which Rankin was the pupil collided with another aircraft, a Vickers Wellington medium bomber that had been flying in a separate training exercise.

Rankin, his British pilot instructor, Sergeant Stanley Downs, and all six of the British airmen training in the Wellington were killed.

John Rankin was 25 years old.

His body was recovered and buried in Little Rissington St Peter Churchyard, in Gloucestershire, England.

In a ceremony at Chipping Norton to mark the 70th anniversary of the crash in 2012, more than a hundred townsfolk and family of the deceased gathered to pay their respects.

Rankin’s name is listed here on the Roll of Honour on my left, among some 40,000 Australians who died while 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 Sergeant John McDonald Rankin, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Lachlan Grant
Historian, Military History Section