William Ellis Newton

William Ellis Newton was born on 8 June 1919 in St Kilda, a seaside suburb of Melbourne, Australia. The son of a dentist, he grew up a gifted all-round sportsman, playing cricket, Australian rules football, golf and water polo; as a young cricketer he is said to have once dismissed the Test batsman Bill Ponsford. He was working in a silk warehouse when war came, and he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force, training as a pilot.

Newton served with No. 22 (City of Sydney) Squadron RAAF, flying Douglas Boston light bombers in the gruelling New Guinea campaign against the Japanese. The squadron’s targets lay in heavily defended positions along the coast, and Newton built a reputation for pressing his attacks home through fierce anti-aircraft fire. In a series of operations against the Japanese strongpoint at Salamaua in March 1943 he repeatedly bombed his objectives at low level. On 16 March, attacking buildings and stores at Salamaua, his Boston was hit again and again — the wings and fuselage torn and the fuel tanks pierced — yet he nursed the crippled aircraft the long way back to base.

Two days later, on 18 March 1943, Newton returned to the same target. His aircraft was hit and caught fire, and he was forced to ditch in the sea off the coast. He and his wireless operator, Flight Sergeant John Lyon, survived the ditching and reached the shore, but both were captured by Japanese forces. Lyon was killed within days. Newton was held and interrogated, and on 29 March 1943 he was executed by beheading at Salamaua. He was 23 years old.

For his sustained courage over Salamaua, Newton was awarded the Victoria Cross — the only such award made to a member of the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War. The full circumstances of his death became known only after the war, from captured Japanese documents. He is buried in Lae War Cemetery in Papua New Guinea, and an airfield at Nadzab was named Newton Field in his honour.