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Patterson , Willem Daniel (W D)

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Identity
Person No.
32438
Old ROH no.
2135
Service No.
P2/8447
Last Name
First Name
Willem Daniel
Initials
W D
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
38
Death Record
Cause code
MVA 2,660
Motor vehicle accident
Cause of Death
Died in Military Vehicle Accident. A/Cpl W.D. Patterson was a member of a detail loading an aircraft at K-10, Chinhae, and was directing a transport vehicle that was reversing towards the aircraft. This vehicle failed to stop, and crushed A/Cpl Patterson against the aircraft's fuselage
Military Service
Branch
Air Force
Rank
Corporal
Unit
Unknown
Defence Force
UDF 24,809
Union Defence Force
Memorial
Memorial
Location
Tanggok, Nam District, Busan, South Korea
Address
Coordinates
Panel
On the panel
Alternative Commemoration until grave found
Notes

Husband of Mrs. I. E. Patterson, of Gardens, Cape Town. ref. 85 years of SAAF

Research notes

Locality was wrongly set to "Gauteng" -- corrected 28 Aug 2026 (second pass, this time verified against Cemetery rather than AddInfo text, after the first AddInfo-based pass was found to be unreliable and reverted). This person's own Cemetery is unambiguously outside South Africa; several other people at the same cemetery already correctly show a blank Locality. Cleared rather than guessed at a specific region.
5 Sep 2026: Unit "2 Squadron" (a squadron, SAAF's regiment-equivalent) promoted to Regiment, per John's decision. Corps (South African Air Force) unchanged.
25 Sep 2026, Unit2 service-branch sweep: the stored Secondary Unit "Army" was CLEARED. It was not a sub-unit, it was a service-branch word, and it CONTRADICTED this record's own Branch, "Air Force". Across the roll 787 records carried such a contradiction; judged against Corps and Regiment -- independent of both columns -- the evidence backed Branch 744 times and Unit2 not once. Branch is therefore kept and the contradicting word removed. Nothing is guessed: this man's branch of service is already recorded, and his sub-unit, if any, is simply not known.

Citations
Unknown
External References
Stories 1
on 02 July 2001 · via source
A/Cpl W.D. Patterson was a member of a detail loading an aircraft at K-10, Chinhae, and was directing a transport vehicle that was reversing towards the aircraft. This vehicle failed to stop, and crushed A/Cpl Patterson against the aircraft's fuselage. He was buried in the UN cemetery at Pusan.
Dedications

No dedications have been added yet.