John “Skip” Bailey

12.0
Presumption of Death of Geoffrey Hubert Vincent

A Department of Air Minute Paper dated 12th February 1947 presumed the death of Flight Lieutenant Geoffrey Hubert Vincent.

In the minute Flying Office Allan Meryn Brown said he last saw Geoffrey Vincent on 14th January 1944 when he and Pilot Office R. B. O’Loghlen were taken from the camp with fifteen American prisoners. Brown said as far as he could find out, they were taken from Rabaul by ship. Brown later asked a Japanese interpreter about the two men and he was told they had “gone to an island camp”. The only POW island camp around Rabaul was on Watom Island, north of Rabaul.

Major H.S. Williams, POW Liaison Office in Tokyo reported the same – that Geoffrey Vincent and O’Loghlen with the fifteen Americans (seventeen POWs in all) left Rabaul by ship on 13th February, which had to be the on the “Kenyo Maru” or the “Nihonkai Maru”.

Lieutenant Nyarady, U.S. Navy, stated that whilst he was at Ofuna, Japan, he was told a seventeen man draft of prisoners was due in the camp but they never arrived.

The whereabouts of G.H. Vincent and O’Loghlen was unknown at the time.