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Badge ("Wings"), promoted to Acting Petty Officer and seconded to the Royal Navy. On

return to the UK he was offered a commission with the rank of Sub-Lt. and enrolled for an

officer's training course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Thereafter he underwent a
variety of training courses with Barracudas, specifically torpedo and submarine dive-

bombing, anti-submarine reconnaissance, and deck-landing.

In March 1945 he was posted with 815 squadron to HMS Landrail, a shore base at
Machrihanish, Kintyre, on the west coast of Scotland, where the squadron was to begin an

intensive working-up programme in preparation for action in the Far East. On 28 March

his Barracuda ME 121 crashed into the sea off Ballure Point, Argyll, while doing a practice
bombing attack, killing him and his crew.

He was unmarried and was survived by his mother and two younger brothers in Kalk Bay.
He is commemorated on Panel 95, column1, in the Plymouth Naval Memorial, Devon, UK.

Sources: Clive Wake; Richard Wake; Commonwealth War Graves Commission website;

SA Archives.

Visit to our brother’s seagrave on 28 March 1991

Clive Wake

In 1990, with the help of the Fleet Air Arm, we were able to trace the exact location of
Vivian’s seagrave off the coast of Kintyre. On the anniversary of his death, 28 March

1991, my brother Richard and I were taken to the spot by a local fisherman. It was a bright,
calm day, although the swell was strong enough to make us very unsteady on our feet. We

dropped several bunches of daffodils onto the water, and three red carnations, one for our

brother and one each for the other two crew members who had died with him. Then
Richard dropped overboard the smooth, oval stone he had found on the beach facing the

spot on a previous visit and which he had engraved with our brother’s name and dates,

along with our own names and the date of our visit to his seagrave. Some nine years later,
the stone was caught up in the nets of another fisherman, two or three miles away from the

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