Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

41 Exactly a week after the Whit Monday match the much-delayed D-Day invasion of Normandy began. While probably most RAAF flyers had long been involved in Bomber Command’s relentless raids deep into Germany, now the attacks by the ANZAC squadron on German shipping were crucial support for the hard-fought Normandy landings. Mark Rowe graphically describes the tensions of the squadron’s pilots and navigators in ‘six-hour shifts, waiting in motor-buses on the runway, for orders to scramble at a moment’s notice.’ After joining other crews on incident-free ‘recces’ off the French coast near Dieppe on 2 June and the Dutch coast six days later, Carmody and Docking were one of two scouring the Dutch coast for enemy shipping on 8 June ‘from north of Terschelling eastwards to Heligoland’. The other crew were Flying Officer Williams and navigator, Flight Sergeant William Roach, Carmody’s cricket teammate. At 1400 hours the Williams/Roach plane was seen to make a diving turn into the sea from a height of 50 feet – the aircraft sank immediately. Aircraft L/455 [Carmody’s] circled the scene of the crash for ten minutes – no survivors were seen. F/O Williams and F/Sgt Roach were posted as ‘Missing, believed Killed.’ No enemy shipping was sighted and L/455 landed safely. In the Air and on the Field with the RAAF Keith Carmody and Walter Robins meet to toss up at Lord’s on 29 May 1944, a week before D-Day, in the match England v RAAF.