Sub-Lieutenant (A) John Allnutt Pickard 1918-26/6/1942.

John Pickard came from Invercargill and attended Southland Boys High School.  

In the photo below of New Zealanders training in the Fleet Air Arm in July, 1941, John is shown in the mifddle row, fifth from the left. He was in London earlier in that year and was caught in an air raid and slightly injured.  In May, 1942, he was reported as being stationed in Cochin, India - on a small airfield on the west coast near the southernmost tip of the sub-continent.

-Otago Daily Times, 26/7/1941.

In July of 1942, John was listed as "missing," and then, in October, "missing, presumed dead."

The only reference to John Pickard I have been able to find is in a work of history published in 1945 - "Forgotten Skies - the story of the air forces in India and Burma" by W W Russell. John is first mentioned just after the Japanese carrier raid on Sri Lanka.

"Just in case they should have split and sent up a force in the direction of Cape Comorin, Jack Pickard, a quiet New Zealand F.A.A. pilot, flew south with Derek and myself in our Wapiti and our Fulmar to Trivandrum. We took it in turns to patrol the southern tip of India, each silently praying that we should be spared the sight of those wicked-looking carrier-hulls with their dreaded brood of Zeros. We flew out patrols all day and saw nothing. Back at the aerodrome we slept out near  the aircraft."

The Westland Wapiti was a two seater biplane - a 1920s design. The Fulmar was a more recent monoplne but both stood little to no chance against the Mitsubishi Zero. 

It was monsoon weather that sealed John Pickard's fate:

"With the rain and wind came the bad losses, Jack Pickard, the soft-spoken New Zealander, disappeared on the short stretch to Coimbatore where he was ferrying an Albacore. The clouds and rain were down to a hundred feet, and there was only one gap two miles wide at Palghat, between the Nilgiris and the Annamallie mountains, where he could squeeze through to Coimbatore. We searched by air and car for days, but there has been no trace of him or his aircraft."

Invercargill Cemetery.