Cairns Catalina Memorial displaying plaque for recovered aircraft
A man who had no idea the RAAF were still looking for his uncle’s missing WWII aircraft which departed from Cairns, unveiled a plaque commemorating the crewmen, at the Esplanade.
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FAMILY of the crew on board Royal Australian Air Force Catalina A24-50 No. 11 Squadron attended a special ceremony to mark its recovery on Sunday.
Catalina A24-50 departed from Cairns in September 1943 on a WWII mission to Dutch New Guinea (present-day Indonesia) but crashed in mountainous terrain northwest of FakFak, Papua, Indonesia.
In 2018 the crash site and remaining artefacts were located by Indonesian timber cutters and the investigation was completed by the RAAF Historic Unrecovered War Casualties unit in 2019, before a commemorative plaque at the Cairns Catalina Memorial on the Esplanade was unveiled on Sunday.
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Among the family members attending was crewman James Oliver’s nephew – David Oliver.
“It’s amazing 70-odd years later they found the plane because no-one had ever known what had happened to him,” Mr Oliver, who lives at Noosa, said.
“For us it’s an end of an era, with the search now complete.
“My dad unfortunately passed away last year. He knew they’d found (his brother), but because of Covid, they couldn’t do the ceremony last year.”
Mr Oliver said he had been doing some research on genealogy company Ancestry about nine years ago, and it wasn’t until three years ago he received some information.
“I received an email from a researcher who works for the RAAF asking if I was related to James Percival Oliver and that’s how it all started from there.”
Originally published as Cairns Catalina Memorial displaying plaque for recovered aircraft
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