LEST WE FORGET
Flying Officer Dennis Albert GURNEY
Service No: 402595
Born: London, England, 20 August 1912
Enlisted in the RAAF: 14 October 1940 (at Sydney NSW)
Unit: No. 8 Squadron, Tadji PNG
Died: Air Operations: Aitape to Wewak (No. 8 Squadron Beaufort aircraft A9-630), New Guinea, 24 January 1945, Aged 32 Years
Buried: Unrecovered
CWGC Additional Information: Son of Albert Swain Gurney and Agnes Dorothea Gurney; husband of Marjorie Clara Gurney, of Gulgong, New South Wales.
Roll of Honour: London, England
Remembered: Panel 6, Lae Memorial, PNG
Remembered: Panel 99, Commemorative Area, Australian War Memorial, Canberra ACT
Remembered: Gulgong ANZAC Memorial Honour Rolls, Gulgong NSW
The RAAF rescue ship had been grappling with a breakaway convoy of American barges in the rough sea (near Wewak), and on a fruitless search for Flying Officer Sam Clarke’s Beaufort crew which had failed to return from a night mission on 24 January 1945. Clarke, a former West Australian interstate footballer, with navigator Flying Officer Colin Shade and wireless air gunners Flying Officer Denis Gurney and Warrant Officer Allan Giles, had comprised a “new” crew, only recently from the South, and to whom local conditions were an unknown quantity.
Extract from Graham, B. (Burton) and Frank Smyth, A Nation Grew Wings: The Story of the RAAF Beaufort Squadrons in New Guinea, Winterset House Publishers Melbourne VIC, 1946 – Page 217
On 24 January 1945, Beaufort A9-630 failed to return from an anti-submarine patrol. The crew members were:
Flying Officer Sydney Campbell Clarke (427498) (Pilot)
Warrant Officer Allan Francis Giles (404670) (Wireless Air Gunner)
Flying Officer Denis Albert Gurney (402595) (Wireless Air Gunner)
Flying Officer Colin Ritchie Shade (403398) (Navigator)
References:
Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour On-Line Records
Commonwealth War Graves Commission On-Line Records
Department of Veteran’s Affairs On-Line WWII Nominal Roll
National Archives of Australia On-Line Record A9845, 264
Register of War Memorials in New South Wales On-Line