Remembering Tommy

Sergeant Thomas Frederick Pickering was a talented young pilot. He served at Bradfield Park, Point Cook, Temora and Rathmines. He was involved in training other RAAF personnel at 10 Elementary Flying Training School at Temora.

Tommy was the first 9 Squadron member to lose their life at Rathmines. He was piloting A2-11 Supermarine Seagull V when the aircraft turned over just offshore from Rathmines Theatre on Lake Macquarie. He did not survive the accident. His body was not immediately recovered. Tommy was 22 years old.

Tommy is remembered at the Australian War Memorial and Catalina Base Memorial here at Rathmines. He is buried in Botany General Cemetery.

Corporal Stanley James Cook Cummings received a British Empire Medal for his courageous underwater salvage efforts following the accident.

“On the 5th March, 1942, Corporal Cummings again displayed courage and devotion to duty when an aircraft crashed and sank in about thirty-three feet of water… during the whole course of the salvage operations and at some considerable risk to himself, [he] continued diving in his efforts to locate and free the pilot.”

This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License