1944 June Quarter death registration-

Name: Austen, Harold C.---Age: 25

District: St. Austell (Volume & Page: 5c & 111)

RAF 525 Squadron's Vickers Warwick III (#BV 247) aircraft, with fourteen air crew members and passengers aboard, had taken off from RAF Station St. Mawgan, Newquay, Cornwall, on a scheduled service flight (England to Algiers Maison Blance airport, via Gibraltar), when it exploded in mid-air and crashed into Watergate Bay near Newquay Bay. All 14 on board the aircraft perished in the crash. The Warwick was thought to be carrying several top-secret agents, military advisers, linguists and top-secret documents, as well as thousands of £100 bills and possibly boxes of gold (thought to be for use in helping to finance European underground groups).

The passengers included two French officers enroute to meet with General Charles DeGaulle in Cairo; two Polish couriers enroute to Warsaw; one senior staff officer enroute to Cairo; one Greek expert enroute to Greece; one Hungarian/Canadian enroute to Hungary on an S. O. E. mission; three S. O. E. officers; and one Russian-speaking MI6 officer enroute to Yugoslavia to meet with Tito partisans.

The 525 Squadron members who perished in this accident were:

RCAF Flying Officer Harold Calven AUSTEN,

RAFVR Flying Officer Albert George Tracey GARDINER,

RCAF Flying Officer Arthur Douglas GAVEL,

RAF Pilot Officer George William LAMB,

RAFVR Flying Officer Noel Spencer NICKLIN,

RAFVR Flight Sergeant Michael Kingston ROWE and

RAF Squadron Leader William Godfrey TILEY.

The passengers were:-

Lieutenant Colonel Ivor Watkins BIRTS,

RAF Air Commodore George Lionel Seymour DAWSON-DAMER, Viscount CARLOW,

Lieutenant Colonel Stanley CASSON,

Kapitan Edmund GÓJSKI,

Kapral Józef KRÓL,

Lieutenant Stephen MAITLAND (using the alias, Lieutenant Stephen MATE)

(He is thrice listed on the CWGC: Steve Mate (Civilian), Stephen Mate (General List) and Stephen Maitland [Alias]),

Major Thomas Percival WARD and

Roger A. A. BAUDOIN/BAUDOUIN.

Military Service:-

Rank: Flying Officer

Trade: Wireless Operator/Air Gunner

Service Number: J/18002

Age: 26

Force: Air Force

Unit: Royal Canadian Air Force

Division: 525 RAF Squadron [MOTTO: Vinciendo Vincimus ('We link together to conquer.')]

Son of Henry John and Mary Alice Austen of Oyen, Alberta, Canada.

Flying Officer Harold Calven Austen is commemorated on Page 240 of Canada's Second World War Book of Remembrance.

He is also commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

****NOTE-

The remains of F/O Gavel could not be identified when the bodies were retrieved from the water on 24 April, seven days following the crash.

Later on in 1944 a body was recovered from the sea, could not be identified, and, as was the custom for bodies recovered from the sea, was buried in an unmarked grave in the Fairpark Cemetery in St. Columb Minor, Cornwall (Grave #687).

The grave headstone that was put into place at that time read:-

'A SAILOR OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

MERCHANT NAVY

24 APRIL 1944

KNOWN UNTO GOD.'

Forty years later, in 1984, through careful research and examination by several experts, Chief Inspector Derek Fowkes, a Cornwall policeman, consulted Murray W. Gavel, a Saskatchewan wheat farmer who was the brother of Arthur Gavel, and they were able to finally identify the remains of the 'unknown Merchant Navy sailor' as being those of Flying Officer Arthur Douglas Gavel.

Finally, in 1988, F/O A. D. Gavel was re-interred in the same plot (#687) during a full military ceremony with a Royal Air Force honour guard. In place was a new headstone that bears his name.****