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Cymru Fyw
15 March 2012
Last updated at
07:05
In Pictures: Malaysia 1950 RAF crash bodies reinterred
The funeral service with full military honours is taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the servicemen killed when their RAF Dakota crashed in dense jungle in August 1950. The families will be presented with the Elizabeth Cross, given to the relatives of those killed in conflicts since the end of World War II.
The remains were recovered by the Malaysian authorities after a request from the brother of navigator Geoffrey Carpenter (second left). Left to right: Corporal Phillip Bryant, 25, from Southend-on-Sea; Geoffrey Carpenter, 23, from West Norwood; Driver Oliver Goldsmith, 21, from Neston; 3. Driver Roy Wilson, 21, from Birkenhead.
The Dakota, similar to this one, was on a target-marking mission. It took off from Changi airfield in Singapore as part of the British effort in the Malayan Emergency, an anti-Communist guerrilla war. A search party later concluded it made one successful run but crashed in to a ravine while on the second due to engine failure.
In 2008, a 150-strong team of Malaysian military, police and specialist forensic archaeologists went to the wreckage site. The original search party, under constant threat of attack, had buried the remains of the 12 on board - British servicemen, a Danish civilian and three Malaysians - in a communal grave.
One of the men whose remains were recovered for the service in Kuala Lumpur was RAF Signaller Thomas O'Toole DFM, from Merthyr Tydfil. In 1941, he gave up his reserved occupation as a miner to volunteer. He was shot down off the coast of Sweden, a neutral country, in 1943 and was interned there.
The crash site was considered inaccessible but the Malaysians launched the expedition after Geoffrey Carpenter's brother asked for a map of the area. The aircrew had been dropping smoke markers for Lincoln bombers detailed to bomb communist camps in the Malaysian jungle.
The Malayan Emergency was fought by British, Commonwealth and other security forces in Malaya against communist insurgents, between 1948 and 1960. Britain eventually agreed to independence. In 1957 Malaya became independent and the state of emergency ended in 1960.
This is the dense jungle of the Kelantan region in Malaysia close to the crash site. The relatives of those attending the funeral service will pay their last respects at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site at a cemetery in Kuala Lumpur.
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