LEADING AIRCRAFTMAN ARTHUR WILLIAM THOMAS JOLLOW GROUNDSTAFF FITTER IIE SERVICE NUMBER 15216

Arthur's Service record (including this photo) is available at the National Archives here by typing in his Surname, select from the drop down menu category: Air Force personnel records and Service number 15216. 

A good portion of Arthur's service and story comes from his grandson Sean:

 " we know a fair bit about his service, mostly through a collection of letters he sent home to my grandmother throughout the war and a bunch of photos he took with a small camera he travelled with. He was an aircraft mechanic throughout the war and his closest friend during his war service appears to be Athol Kerry from his letters. I know he left Melbourne in September 1941 on the MV Aorangi bound for England via the Panama canal and Halifax, Canada. He joined 458 Sq at Norfolk in November 1941 before embarking for the Middle East on the 20th of March 1942. Upon arrival in Egypt in June 1942 he was seconded to a US Army Air Corps bomber squadron as a ground engineer (I've done some research and it turns out the unit he was posted with was the HALPRO heavy bombardment unit, which was originally supposed to be bombing Japan from China as a follow-up to the Doolittle raids but after the Chinese air bases were overrun was diverted to the Middle East. HALPRO later became the 1st Provisional Bombardment Group before becoming the 376th Heavy Bombardment Group). He worked on B24 Liberator Bombers that were launching raids into Libya, Tunisia, the Med and as far north as Romania (he took quite a few photos and through contact with the 376th HBG historian we've been able to identify a number of the planes he photographed as being HALPRO bombers). 

He rejoined 458 Sq in November 1942 and was based across the Middle East/North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria) until June 1944, again working as a ground engineer. At some stage he must have started subbing in as a flight engineer as he talks vaguely about putting in for a remustering to get his flight quals and discusses going up numerous times (possibly on some bombing runs, though he's very vague about that). The only thing specific he discusses with regards to his work on the Wellington bombers was that he became the principal engineer (ground or flight, it's unclear) for 'S' for Sugar. In June 1942 he relocated to Sardinia and then a few months later to mainland Italy. He returned to Australia sometime in late 1944/early1945 with a bad case of Malaria.

Upon return to Australia Arthur joined TWA and worked as an aircraft mechanic on commercial planes for the rest of his career. He passed away in the early 90s and my grandmother Tess passed away in 2007. He is survived by his 4 children who all have recollections of stories he told about the war (mostly the funny things that went on around the airfield or shenanigans he got caught up in when on leave). One of the stories my mother recalls is that while he originally shunned any involvement in remembrance related activities he did get quite involved in the 458 Squadron Association, and she believes he may have held some sort of office position at some stage. We don't have any record of this however, so she may be mistaken.

I hope you find this useful. If you have any information that would help flush out his service story that would be much appreciated (we have dates from his letters but his geographic whereabouts were mostly kept pretty vague for censorship reasons). In particular, if you have any information or photographs on 'S' for Sugar I'd love to hear/see it."

In reply to Sean (from the Association) this photo comes from the Official Squadron Albums webpage,         Album 1, chapter 5 page 110b. Also in 1973 Arthur became the NSW Flight Secretary/Correspondent.                   See August 1973 Newsletter #96 at our Newsletters page. Well done to Arthur for continuing to serve! 

We welcome the family to Contact us to add any additional content to this/his webpage.