Flight-Lieutenant Alwyn Gordon Levy (LEV5502)

Basic Information

Unique reference:

LEV5502

Gender:

Male

Birth

Date of birth:

19 Adar II 5657 (23 March 1897)

Place of birth:

Sydney, Australia

Death

Date of death:

13 Iyyar 5678 (25 April 1918)

Died in combat?:

Place of death:

Ashford , Kent

Cause of death:

Mid-air collision

Burial place:

Willesden United Synagogue Cemetery

Alwyn and his father emigrated to New York in the early 1900s where Bert worked as a writer and producer in the movie industry

Alwyn was in his second year of studying engineering at Columbia University in New York when in November 1917 he decided to enlist. As an Australian citizen he was unable to join the American Army and went to Toronto in Canada to enlist in the RFC.

Alwyn graduated from the RFC’s Canadian school of aerial gunnery the following February after 25 hours of solo flights on a Curtiss N4. On 23 March 1918 he was posted to RFC’s 42nd training school at Wye aerodrome in Kent.

Tragedy stuck at 6.45 in the evening of 25 April 1918 when Alwyn, who was under instruction in aerial fighting in his Sopwith Pup collided in mid-air with an Avro 504 trainer flown by his cousin Cyril Whelan and a Lieutenant Manable.

No one is sure what actually happened but it appears that that the cousins were attempting to signal each other resulting in disastrous consequences. Alwyn was buried at Willesden Jewish cemetery

Both deaths were tragic loss for not only their parents but also for the Levy family back in Australia as only a month earlier another their cousin’s, Sergeant Albert Levy, MM had been killed in France.

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