PERSONAL
Advice has been received that Sergeant Ivan Raymond Styles, only son of of Mrs and the late Mr Horace Styles, Dunedin, has been killed in action overseas. -Evening Star, 20/10/1942.
FOR THE EMPIRE’S CAUSE
STYLES. — Killed on active service, Sergeant Ivan Raymond Styles, R.N.Z.A.F., beloved only son of Mrs and the late Horace Styles, of Dunedin, aged 27 years. -Otago Daily Times, 22/10/1942.
SERGEANT I. R. STYLES
Sergeant Ivan Raymond Styles, of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, who has been killed on active service, was formerly a resident of Dunedin. Sergeant Styles, who was the only son of Mrs and the late Horace Styles, was educated at the St. Clair School and the Otago Boys’ High School. After a brief period in business in Dunedin he went to Wellington, and was a member of the firm of Hope Bros., Ltd., in that city at the time he enlisted in 1940. He was keenly interested in amateur athletics and was a member of the Dunedin Anglican Harriers’ Club. Music also interested him, and while in Wellington he was an active member of the Operatic Society there. -Otago Daily Times, 28/10/1942.
Ivan Styles was an air gunner on a Vickers Wellington bomber belonging to No. 11 OTU (Operational Training Unit) when the plane took off for a cross-country training exercise. The reason for the fatal crash of the Wellington is not known - it was seen to dive through cloud and crash with no survivors. All of the crew were from New Zealand.
Ivan Styles had flown 79 hours and logged one operational mission - possibly one of the "thousand bomber raids" earlier in 1942 when the RAF sought to overwhelm German defences and morale in three large night attacks on German cities. The RAF used all of the aircraft it could muster, including those of Operational Training Units.
Ivan is buried in Ollerton Cemetery in Nottinghamshire, England, with three of his crew.
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