Pilot Officer Harold William Bird, No. 77 Squadron (RAF)
Australian War MemorialHarold Bird was born on 3 August 1915 in the Adelaide suburb of Ethelton, the son of David and Hilda Bird.
He attended Woodville School, and went on to work as a clerk at Goldsbrough Mort and Co.
On 18 November 1939, Harold Bird married Joyce Biddle. The couple bought a property in the Adelaide suburb of Cheltenham, and established a home.
Harold Bird enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 25 April 1942. After initial training, he began training as a pilot, attending elementary flight training school at Parafield, and service flight training school at Mallala.
Less than a year after enlisting, on 6 March 1943, he embarked from Melbourne, bound for overseas service. As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, he was one of almost 27,500 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, air gunners, and flight engineers who, throughout the course of the war, joined Royal Air Force squadrons or Australian squadrons based in Britain.
Arriving in the United Kingdom, Bird attended further training before joining No. 19 Operational Training Unit. It was based at RAF Kinloss in the north-east of Scotland, and with this unit Bird trained as a member of a night bomber crew.
On 8 May 1944 Bird transferred to No. 77 Squadron, RAF. Operating as part of Bomber Command, No. 77 Squadron flew Handley Page Halifax four-engined heavy bombers, and was based at RAF Full Sutton in Yorkshire.
Just over a month after joining his first squadron, on the night of the 16th of June, Pilot Officer Harold Bird was the pilot of a Halifax that took off from RAF Full Sutton at 11:15 pm, detailed to bomb Sterkrade in the west of Germany. Nothing was heard from the aircraft after take off, and it failed to return to base, one of seven aircraft that failed to return from the mission.
The crew were initially declared missing, but it was later established that it had crashed in the sea off the coast of Holland, and that all had been killed.
- Sergeant Reginald Castle-Hall
- Sergeant Alfred Freemantle
- Sergeant John Lauder
- Flying Officer Stuart Mackay
- Flight Sergeant Frederick Meeghan
- Flight Sergeant Robert Warren
- and Pilot Officer Harold William Bird, who was 28 years old
Bird’s body was recovered from the sea and buried at Terschelling General Cemetery, on one of the group of Frisian Islands located off the north-west coast of Holland.
- AWM Roll of Honour https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/R1701892
