Australian Pilot from The Great Escape honoured at Australian War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial in Canberra will be commemorating the service and sacrifice of Squadron Leader James Catanach at the Last Post Ceremony on 25 March 2024.

James Catanach was part of the escape from Stalag Luft III made famous in the movie The Great Escape. The ceremony will occur on the 80th anniversary of the escape.

James was born in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern and enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in August 1940, aged 18, and trained as a pilot before embarking for service overseas.

James flew with No. 455 Squadron, RAAF – the first Australian squadron to bomb Germany – and between June of 1941 and September 1942 took part in operations against industrial targets in Germany and in support of convoys bound for the Soviet Union.

In June 1942, James was promoted to squadron leader, reportedly the youngest person in the Royal Australian Air Force to achieve that rank. The same month, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for attacks across Germany.

In September 1942 his aircraft was struck by enemy fire. He landed under fire on the northern Norwegian shoreline, near the Russian border, saving the lives of all on board by avoiding the freezing Arctic waters.

James and his crew were captured and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III. He was among 76 men to escape as part of the Great Escape on the night of 24/25 March 1944.

James and three other prisoners teamed up and reached Berlin before changing trains for Hamburg, but were caught while travelling to the Danish border.

The men were handed over to the Gestapo who interrogated them and told them they would be returned to the prison camp. On the 29 March 1944 James Catanach and his fellow prisoners were cold-bloodedly executed in the countryside by Gestapo agents.

James Catanach was 22 years old. He was posthumously Mentioned in Despatches in June 1944; his Distinguished Flying Cross medal was handed to his next of kin.

The Last Post ceremony is held at 4.30 pm every day except Christmas Day in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial.

Each ceremony shares the story behind one of 103,000 names on the Roll of Honour. To date, the Memorial has delivered more than 3,300 ceremonies, each featuring individual stories of service from colonial to recent conflicts. It would take almost 280 years to read the story behind each of the 103,000 names listed on the Roll of Honour.

“The Last Post Ceremony is our commitment to remembering and honouring the legacy of Australian service,” Memorial Director Matt Anderson said.

“Through our daily Last Post Ceremony, we not only acknowledge where and how these men and women died. We also tell the stories of who they were when they were alive, and of the families who loved and, in so many cases, still mourn for them.

“The Last Post is now associated with remembrance but originally it was a bugle call to sound the end of the day’s activities in the military. It is a fitting way to end each day at the Memorial.”

The Last Post Ceremony honouring the service of James Catanach will be live streamed to the Australian War Memorial’s YouTube page, https://www.youtube.com/c/awmlastpost.

The stories told at the Last Post Ceremony are researched and written by the Memorial’s military historians, who begin the process by looking at service records and other official and private records before building profiles that include pre-war life, personal milestones and military experiences.