Identity
Person No.
30743
Old ROH no.
2147
Service No.
P1/38342
Last Name
First Name
John Owen
Initials
J O
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
28
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
KIA 14,781
Killed in action
Cause of Death
Killed in action, in North American F-51 Mustang #372. Major Mouton led a three aircraft flight, comprising himself, Lt J.O. Holtzhausen in the No.2 position and Capt van der Merwe in the No.3 position. Their target was a railroad at YE5004, which they attacked from 7500 feet. Visibility over the target was poor, with low cloud and haze. Prior to his attack, Major Mouton noticed that both his No.2 and No.3 were in position, and after the attack he headed for the form up point and called his flight to check in. Only No.3 did so. On calling Lt Holtzhausen again, Major Mouton received a response, to the effect that Lt Holtzhausen was joining an American flight for the return home. However, he failed to arrive with any of the American flights involved in the attack, and was not heard of again
Military Service
Branch
Air Force
Rank
Lieutenant
Regiment
Unit
Unknown
Secondary Unit
Army
Defence Force
UDF 24,808
Union Defence Force
Location
Country
Locality
Unknown
Cemetery
Grave Reference
Memorial
Memorial
Location
Tanggok, Nam District, Busan, South Korea
Address
Coordinates
Panel
On the panel
Panel 13
Unit History
Part of
Notes
Husband of Mrs. Sybil Dulcie Holtzhausen (born Eckstein on 20 May 1923 and married 10 December 1949), of 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.
Citations
Unknown
External References
- South African War Graves Project open source ↗
-
United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea
open source ↗
United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea (UNMCK), Busan — South African Korean War dead.
Stories 1
Major Mouton led a three aircraft flight, comprising himself, Lt J.O. Holtzhausen in the No.2 position and Capt van der Merwe in the No.3 position. Their target was a railroad at YE5004, which they attacked from 7500 feet. Visibility over the target was poor, with low cloud and haze. Prior to his attack, Major Mouton noticed that both his No.2 and No.3 were in position, and after the attack he headed for the form up point and called his flight to check in. Only No.3 did so. On calling Lt Holtzhausen again, Major Mouton received a response, to the effect that Lt Holtzhausen was joining an American flight for the return home. However, he failed to arrive with any of the American flights involved in the attack, and was not heard of again.
Dedications
No dedications have been added yet.