Shep's Place Family Tree

When WW2 broke out he enlisted in the RAAF and was posted to the RAF to serve as a pilot officer in the Middle East.
He was killed in an accident in Bilbeis, Egypt, when his commanding officer took a number of inexperienced pilots including Roy out on an unscheduled training flight in a Lockheed Lodestar. The short flight ended in disaster when the plane, flying too low over the military camp, struck the tent poles of the officers' mess, flipped over and crashed in flames killing all on board and injuring a number of others.

Coincidently, the RAF Group Commander overseeing the enquiry, Air Vice Marshall Wilfred McClaughry, was killed together with 10 of his staff just a few months later when his Lockheed Lodestar went down in bad weather, just 50 kilometres away near Heliopolis.