The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (18839) Flying Officer Ian Stewart Ross, No. 617 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 Richard Cruise, the story for this day was on (18839) Flying Officer Ian Stewart Ross, No. 617 Squadron (RAF), Second World War.

18839 Flying Officer Ian Stewart Ross, No. 617 Squadron (RAF)
Killed in flying battle 12 January 1945
Story delivered 16 May 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Flying Officer Ian Stewart Ross.

Ian Ross was born on the 28th of March 1920 in Camperdown, Victoria.

His father, Alexander, had served with the 39th Battalion in the First World War before being seriously wounded. After a long period in a coma, Alexander Ross received a medical discharge and returned to Australia, where he met and married Christina and raised a family.

Alexander Ross never truly recovered from his wartime service, succumbing to his injuries when Ian was eight years old. After his father’s death, the family moved to the Melbourne suburb of Alphington, where Ian attended South Melbourne State School and South Melbourne Technical School.

As his mother never remarried, Ross left school early in order to bring in money for the family; he took up an apprenticeship at D.W. Bingham’s Motor Garage in South Melbourne. When war was declared in September 1939, his sisters had married and moved out of home. Ross was engaged to his sweetheart Ivy, and the pair was due to be married, but with his father’s experience of war in mind, he decided it would be best to put it off until the war was over.

Ian Ross enlisted with the Royal Australian Air Force Volunteer Reserve in June 1940. In October he took another oath to the crown, and the 20-year-old became a member of the rapidly expanding RAAF Ground Staff Force.

Ross initially served as an engine fitter, but while at Point Cook a relative who had enlisted as a pilot took him on what proved to be a highly memorable flight. It ended by overshooting its landing approach, and both men were punished for the joyride by being made to pay the cost of repairs. Regardless, Ross fell in love with flying. He applied to become an aircrew member, and in December 1941 he began training as a pilot.

On 12 August 1942, Ross embarked for overseas service. As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, he was one of almost 27,000 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined Royal Air Force and Royal Australian Air Force squadrons in Britain throughout the course of the war.

In January 1944, Ross joined 57 Squadron RAF at Scampton. After flying 14 operations with 57 Squadron he was transferred to 617 Squadron in April 1944.

617 Squadron had been formed under great secrecy at RAF Scampton in March 1943 for the specific task of attacking three major dams in the Ruhr industrial region in Germany. They became renowned as the dam busters. Throughout the rest of the war, the squadron continued their precision bombing role, including the use of the enormous “Tallboy” and “Grand Slam” bombs on targets such as concrete U-boat shelters and bridges.

At 8.46 am, Flying Officer Ross took off in a Lancaster tasked to attack shipping and U-boat pens at Bergen in Norway. Reaching the target area at about 1 pm, the aircraft was hit by flak and lost an engine. Jettisoning its bomb, Ross set course back to base, but soon came under attack from a fighter off the Norwegian coast. With the aircraft taking even more damage, Ross was forced to ditch his Lancaster in the sea.

Flight Lieutenant Freddie Watts, who was in another Lancaster on the operation, radioed Ross’s position to air–sea rescue, and saw the crew climb out onto the wing and wave to him and the other aircraft circling the area. Watts circled the downed aircraft for as long as fuel reserves allowed before returning to base.

Later in the day a lifeboat was dropped to the stranded crew before the Lancaster sank, and the crew managed to get aboard; but when surface craft arrived, neither the lifeboat nor any survivors could be found.
No further news was heard, and in November the crewmembers were officially declared presumed dead.

Confirmation came in 1949, when the body of Flying Office Ellwood, a member of Ross’s crew, washed ashore on the Aasvar Islands in northern Norway. The remains of the other six members of the crew were never recovered, and today they are commemorated at the Runnymede Memorial, which is dedicated to some 20,500 men and women from air forces of the British Empire who were lost in air and other operations during the Second World War and have no known grave.

Ian Ross was 24 years old.

His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, among almost 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 Flying Officer Ian Stewart Ross, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Duncan Beard
Editor, Military History Section