Informal portrait of 22068 Flight Lieutenant (Flt Lt) Keith Clarence Matthews, 77 Squadron RAAF, ...

Accession Number P03251.045
Collection type Photograph
Object type Black & white
Physical description Black & white
Maker Unknown
Date made c 1943
Conflict Second World War, 1939-1945
Copyright

Item copyright: Copyright expired - public domain

Public Domain Mark This item is in the Public Domain

Description

Informal portrait of 22068 Flight Lieutenant (Flt Lt) Keith Clarence Matthews, 77 Squadron RAAF, of Parkes, NSW. He enlisted in the RAAF on 18 July 1942, and trained as a fighter pilot in the Empire Air Training Scheme in Canada, before being commissioned on 9 July 1943. He was posted to the United Kingdom and while attached to 183 (Typhoon) Squadron, he was shot down over Normandy, France while strafing a level crossing, on 24 June 1944, and taken prisoner of war (POW). He spent eleven months in Stalag Luft 3 in Germany and returned home on 9 September 1945, electing to remain in the RAAF. In 1950, he was posted to 77 Squadron in Korea. On 14 February 1951, while flying a Mustang, he failed to return from a mission over enemy territory during a severe snow storm and was posted missing presumed killed, along with A5166 Warrant Officer Sinclair Sutherland Squiers, also from Parkes. He has no known grave.

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