NZW39913 Sergeant John Edward Fuller 11/2/1916-14/8/1940

Weekly News photo.

John Edward Fuller was the son of Hugh and Kathleen of Blenheim and married to Dorothy of Brooklyn, Wellington.  That is all I have been able to discover about his private life.

He joined the Royal Air force and was posted to number 15 Officer Training Unit, which was formed in August 1940 at Harwell in Berkshire. Its purpose was to train crews to operate the Vickers Wellington medium bomber.  He went missing with his crew on August 14, 1940.

In the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents site I was able to find some details of the crash in which he died:  Wellington L4308, 6 crew on board, all killed.  The circumstances: The crew was engaged in a cross country training mission. En route, the pilot lost control of the aircraft that crashed 5 miles east of the Lundy Island, at the mouth of the Bristol Channel. All six crew members were killed. The aircraft was seen to crash with its port engine on fire.

Crew:
Sgt Harold William Sabin, pilot,
Sgt R. L. Peacock,
Sgt John Edward Fuller 3.

Picton Cemetery

It seems that the plane and its crew were never found as John Fuller has no grave and his name is one of the over 20 000 inscribed on the Runnymede Memorial for those airmen who took off from British bases in the UK and Europe and who have no known grave.

Runnymede, NZ War Graves Project photo.