The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (400894) Flight Sergeant Ronald Frederick Waldon, No. 460 Squadron RAAF, 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 Tristan Rallings, the story for this day was on (400894) Flight Sergeant Ronald Frederick Waldon, No. 460 Squadron RAAF, Second World War.

400894 Flight Sergeant Ronald Frederick Waldon, No. 460 Squadron RAAF
KIA 3 June 1942

Today we remember and pay tribute to Flight Sergeant Ronald Waldon.

Ronald Waldon was born in September 1918, the only son of Albert and Rosina Waldon of Beechworth, Victoria. Ronald’s mother died when he was nine years old; his father later remarried, and Ronald went on to become the half-brother of Geoffrey, Wendy and Valerie.

He attended elementary school in Beechworth and the University High School in Melbourne, and then attended teachers college, becoming a primary school teacher for the Victorian Education Department. He enjoyed tennis, swimming and cricket, and at the start of the Second World War, spent three months in the 59th Battalion, Citizens Military Forces, in accordance with Australia’s Universal Military Service Scheme.

Waldon enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in Melbourne in November 1940 and trained as an airman under the auspices of the Empire Air Training Scheme. After completing initial training at Lindfield in New South Wales, he was mustered as an air observer. His role was to navigate an aircraft to the target area and release a payload of bombs onto the designated target.

Waldon then travelled to Canada where he attended air observers School at Edmonton in Alberta, Bombing and Gunnery School at Dafoe in Saskatchewan, and Air Navigation School in Rivers, Manitoba. He then sailed to the United Kingdom to join RAF Bomber Command. He was posted to No. 23 Operational Training Unit at RAF Pershore, where night bomber crews were formed and trained on the twin-engine Vickers Wellington long-range medium bomber.

In March 1942, Waldon was posted to No. 460 Squadron RAAF based at RAF Breighton in Yorkshire, which had recently started operations and begun a six-week “apprenticeship”, bombing less heavily-defended targets on the French Coast. His first operational sortie was a raid on the French port of La Harve on the night of 8 April 1942. Over the following weeks, Waldon and his aircrew bombed Essen in Germany’s Rhineland, returned to Le Harve, and raided Hamburg, Kiel, Stuttgart, and Warnemünde.

In an effort to show the growing numerical strength of RAF Bomber Command, the newly appointed commander in chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, went about accumulating a force of 1,000 bombers for three major raids against major German cities. They were the largest and most devastating raids on Nazi occupied Europe at that point. Waldon and his crew were among 18 Wellington bombers from No. 460 Squadron that participated in Operation Millennium – the first 1,000 bomber raid – on the German city of Cologne, on the night of 30 May 1942. They were also part of the raiding force for the follow-up raid that took place two nights later against the German city of Essen.

Of the ten aircrews from No. 460 Squadron that flew to Essen that night, Waldon’s and one other Wellington bomber failed to return to RAF Breighton. Ron’s aircraft, Wellington Z1394, radio call sign “Q for Queenie”, was last seen taking off from RAF Breighton at 11.26 pm. Owing to a strict adherence to maintaining radio silence, it was unclear at what point during the raid the aircraft disappeared.

Just several weeks before his aircraft went missing, Waldon wrote home to his family urging them not to worry if such an event occurred. “Death in the airforce is instantaneous”, he wrote. “Also remember if I should be posted as missing there is every possibility that I shall float to ground by ‘chute and that I shall have a damned good attempt at evading the blasted Germans and escape back to England.”

Ron remained missing until January 1943, when the Air Ministry in London received news from the German authorities that “Q for Queenie” had crashed in the North Sea during its return journey to Breighton on the night of 3 June 1942. The only surviving crew member, Warrant Officer Doug Butterworth, later told the authorities that the bomber was flying low over the Dutch coast when it crashed into the sea without warning. Butterworth had been captured by a German launch three hours later and knew nothing more about the fate of the crew, whose bodies were later recovered near Vlissingen on the island of Walcheren.

Aged 23 when he died, Ronald Waldon’s remains lie in the Flushing (Vlissingen) Northern Cemetery in the Netherlands alongside the four other crew members of “Q for Queenie”. A small epitaph written by his grieving father appears on his headstone: “His Duty Nobly Done”.

Ronald Waldon’s 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.

His is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Flight Sergeant Ronald Waldon, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section