Flying Officer Colin Levings, No. 512 Squadron (RAF)
Australian War MemorialBorn in Glasgow, Scotland, on 23 July 1911, Colin Levings was the son of Agnes and Ferdinand Levings. Colin’s father had been awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal during the First World War, and when the family emigrated to New Zealand, he maintained a connection to the military, serving with the North Auckland Mounted Rifles in the late 1920s.
Levings then moved to Subiaco, Western Australia, and on 31 January 1939 married Minnie Vennetta Louise. They had a daughter, Colleen Minnie Levings, born in March 1941.
Before enlisting in the RAAF in December 1940, Levings had done pastoral work, worked as a physical balance instructor, and as a miner in Kalgoorlie. Following his enlistment, he began training as a navigator.
He embarked for Europe in September 1941, part of the Empire Air Training Scheme. Levings was one of almost 27,500 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners and engineers who, throughout the course of the war, joined RAF squadrons or Australian squadrons based in Britain.
Levings trained in Kenya before joining the No. 45 Squadron RAF in the Middle East. It was preparing to be posted to Burma in the initial stages of the campaign following Japan’s entry into the war.
During the British retreat from Burma, No. 45 squadron carried out bombing raids against the Japanese as they moved from Magwe to Mandalay to Lashio. Eventually the squadron moved to an airfield near Calcutta in India where they flew operations against the Japanese in Burma. After 12 months, Levings joined No. 34 Squadron, flying Blenheims in the Burma theatre and in December 1943, was posted to Britain.
In early 1944, Levings joined No. 512 Squadron, a transport squadron that had begun retraining as a tactical Dakota squadron. They were to tow gliders and drop paratroops during the forthcoming Normandy landings, and support ground forces in Western Europe.
On 21 March 1944, after taking off from RAF Broadwell in Oxfordshire, Levings’ Dakota crashed into a wooded hillside which had been veiled by low cloud cover. Levings, his two British crewmates and two passengers were all killed.
He was 32. His body was recovered from the crash site and buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery in Britain.
Flying Officer Colin Levings is commemorated on the Subiaco Fallen Soldiers Memorial in Western Australia, and the Australian War Memorial Honour Roll, among almost 40,000 Australians who died while serving in the Second World War.
Lachlan Grant, Historian, Military History Section
Image: London, England. 1944-01-07. Pilot Officer Colin Levings (left) of Kalgoorlie, WA and Flying Officer Ken Gardiner of Highgate Hill, Qld, both of the RAAF, who had just arrived in London (still wearing their tropical kit) after completing a tour of Army Air Operations in RAF Blenheim Squadrons in Burma. They came to a BBC studio to give a broadcast about their experiences, in this series of programmes in the BBC Pacific Service.
- Australian War Memorial https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/AWM2018.1.1.109
