Norman George Mulholland

Norman George Mulholland was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on 18 June 1908, the son of Frederick and Clarice Mulholland of Helensburgh, New South Wales; he was one of the relatively rare Australians who joined the Royal Air Force as a permanent officer before the war, embarking for Britain in June 1933 and building his career as a professional airman over the following eight years. By January 1941 his operational record had earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross, gazetted in the London Gazette of 14 January that year, recognition that preceded his most consequential appointment. In the late summer of 1941 he was chosen as the founding commanding officer of No. 458 Squadron RAAF, a new Australian Wellington unit stood up at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor in Yorkshire under Bomber Command, and he personally led the squadron’s first offensive operation on the night of 20–21 October 1941, when ten Wellingtons attacked the port of Emden and the German-occupied docks at Antwerp and Rotterdam. In February 1942, with the squadron ordered to the Middle East, Wing Commander Mulholland took off from RAF Stanton Harcourt at the head of the first formation of four aircraft bound for Cairo via Malta; when his Wellington overshot Malta by some thirty miles in the dark and turned back, Ju 88 fighters intercepted and shot the aircraft into the sea. He was 34 years old; only the rear gunner survived. He is buried at Catania War Cemetery in Sicily, Section IV.A, Grave 48, and is also commemorated on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.