Weatherman Bob Dingle remembered as generous, active member of Swansea community

BOB Dingle, a generous and active member of the local community, died recently in the May Shaw nursing home, Swansea, aged 95.

Bob Dingle using a theodolite near Mawson Station in February 1955. Picture: AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DIVISION

BOB Dingle, a generous and active member of the local community, died recently in the May Shaw nursing home, Swansea, aged 95.

A quiet, introspective man with a balding head and thin moustache, his 40 years of retirement in the small town of Swansea were in sharp contrast with his varied and adventurous working life.

Born William Robert John Dingle in 1920 in Cornwall, England, he left school in 1936 to join the General Post Office.

With the advent of World War II he enlisted in the RAF and trained as a wireless operator/air gunner.

He flew operationally with No. 78 and 35 Squadrons, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal and was commissioned.

On his 39th operation, December 20, 1943, the starboard inner engine of the Halifax bomber in which he was flying caught fire.

The flames quickly spread and the pilot gave the order to bale out.

He landed safely and linked up with the Belgian underground.

A couple of weeks later he was captured in a random Gestapo check of identity documents while boarding a train to Brussels and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war.

Demobbed in 1947, he migrated to Australia two years later. In 1950 he answered an advertisement in the Mercury for trainee weather observers with the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology.

He served at all five Australian Antarctic stations – Heard Island in 1951, Mawson in 1954, Macquarie Island in 1956, Davis in 1957, and Wilkes in 1959 and was awarded the Queen’s Polar Medal with two dated clasps.

He was the sole weather observer in the party of 10 that established Mawson Station and officer-in-charge of the five-man party that established Davis Station.

He then spent two Antarctic winters with the Americans, at Byrd Station in 1962 and the isolated Plateau Station in 1967.

In 1968 he was the senior Australian weather observer on the US Navy ship Eltanin and over the next three-and-a-half years served on 18 consecutive marine cruises.

In 1975 he retired and moved to Swansea, where he was a respected resident, universally known as Mr Dingle. — H J G DARTNALL

Originally published as Weatherman Bob Dingle remembered as generous, active member of Swansea community