John “Skip” Bailey

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Search for Skip Bailey and his Crew

After the war, various reports were obtained by the RAAF Casualty Section on the last sightings of the crew of Beaufort bomber A9-244. The reports contained the details of many Allied men missing after the war ended. The details of men contained in these reports were complicated by the duplicity of names of those missing. Sergeant John Bailey, United States Army Airforce, was confused with W/O John Pretty Bailey (Skip), RAAF. Flight Lieutenant Geoffrey Hubert Vincent was confused with Flying Officer Charles William Vincent, both from the RAAF and both crew members of A9-244.

Statements were taken, after the war, from Allan Mervyn Brown, Father Joseph Lamarre (an American Catholic priest) and other witnesses as to the fate of the Skip’s crew.

Father Lamarre was captured by the Japanese (together with a Catholic Brother) and imprisoned on Buka, the small island off Bougainville’s Island’s northern tip, in August 1942. On 28th August 1943 he was transferred to the former Catholic Mission at Bitagalip located about 15 miles south of Rabaul, which had been converted into a small prison compound. After a time, he was then transferred to the Japanese Naval Prison POW (Prisoner of War) camp, near Rabaul, and shortly after, the crew of A9-244 arrived. [31]

After the war, Father Lamarre gave a number of statements to the Australian Government and wrote personal letters to POW relatives, as to the fate of the crew but they differed in the detail. He was obviously traumatised by his own treatment by the Japanese, and his first accounts were accurate in some detail but not others. He suffered from ill-health when initially interviewed but as time progressed he began to remember other details which he had previously forgotten.

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[31] Letter from Father Lamarre