Calton Younger
Australian airman and author
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Calton Younger (27 November 1921– January 2014)[1] was a World War II Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilot, a writer, and a trustee of several charities. He survived imprisonment in Nazi German Stalag Luft III POW camp and "The Long March" of 1945.[2][3][4]
Originally from Kerang in Victoria, Australia, Younger moved to Melbourne with his family while a teenager.[1] While he reportedly intended to undertake a career in journalism after leaving school in 1939, following the outbreak of outbreak of World War II, he volunteered for military service.[2] He joined the Empire Air Training Scheme in 1940 and became an observer (navigator) with the RAAF's No. 460 (Bomber) Squadron based in Yorkshire, England.[1] Shot down during a bombing mission northwest of Paris in May 1942, he was captured and kept as prisoner of war.[1] Younger spent time in camps in both Germany and Poland, including Stalag Luft III and Stalag Luft IV,[2] where he wrote and studied.[1] In January 1945, as Soviet forces approached from the east, he was forced to undertake "The Long March" towards Fallingbostel - from where he was liberated in April 1945.[4] After the war, Younger wrote a personal memoir, a novel and several historical works.[2] Calton Younger died, aged 92, in January 2014.[5]
Books
- No Flight From the Cage (1956; a memoir)
- Ireland's Civil War. New York, Taplinger Pub. Co. 1969. ISBN 978-0-8008-4240-6.; historical
- State of Disunion (1972; historical)
- Less than Angel (1960; novel)
- Arthur Griffith (1981; a biography)