LEST WE FORGET
Aircraftman Class I Gordon Thomas JAMIESON
Service No: 148067
Born: Clifton Hills VIC, 17 January 1915
Enlisted in the RAAF: 22 March 1944
Unit: No. 1 Operational Training Unit
Died: Ground Accident, RAAF Station East Sale, 11 November 1944, Aged 29 Years
Buried: Sale War Cemetery, Victoria
CWGC Additional Information: Son of William Sharratt Jamieson and Agnes Jamieson of Hurstbridge
Roll of Honour: Eltham VIC
Remembered: Panel 112, Commemorative Area, Australian War Memorial, Canberra ACT
At about 1020 hours on 11 November 1944, Aircraftman Class I Jamieson, a Trained Technician, was engaged in machine gun inspection and cleaning in the Hudson Squadron Armament Workshop at East Sale. He had completed his inspection and tested the feed operation of the gun on which he was working, by feeding through it a belt of six dummy cartridges. These cartridges were immediately re-linked and used by Aircraftman Class I Frederick William Eric Carton (148250) (Discharged; 1 March 1946) undertaking a similar test on another Browning machine gun which Carton had just inspected. Carton cleaned his gun was on the work bench immediately behind Jamieson. On the fourth working of the breech block by hand, the gun fired and a round passed through Jamieson’s body from the rear. He was removed to No. 4 RAAF Hospital but died at 1910 hours. No explanation was forthcoming as to how the round of Mark 7 ball ammunition came to be included with the test dummy ammunition.
References:
Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour On-Line Records (RAAF Casualty Information compiled by Alan Storr (409804))
Commonwealth War Graves Commission On-Line Records
Department of Veterans’ Affairs On-Line WWII Nominal Roll
National Archives of Australia On-Line Record A705, 166/20/192