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Moir , John (J)

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Photo of Moir
Identity
Person No.
31784
Old ROH no.
2151
Service No.
P1/40172
Last Name
Moir 9
First Name
John
Initials
J
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
1925 (±1 yr) 290
Age at Death
27
Death Record
Date of Death
25 December 1952 144
Cause code
KIA 14,780
Killed in action
Cause of Death
Killed in action 14,654
Killed in action, in North American F-51 Mustang #383. Capt Nortje and Lt J. Moir were briefed to conduct a bomb line patrol. Arriving over Chorwon at 10000 feet, they flew between Chorwon and Kumwa, to a position just north of the Hwachon reservoir. Here they spotted a light aircraft, which they approached. Capt Nortje identified it as a L-19 of the Republic of Korea Air Force. They then sighted another unidentified aircraft, which turned out to be a US Navy spotter aircraft. Lt Moir turned onto the tail of another aircraft, in an attempt to identify this. It was in fact a US Navy Skyraider, and unfortunately the other members of the Skyraider's flight, unable to identify him clearly as friendly, assumed his intentions to be hostile and Lt Moir was attacked and shot down by another of the Skyraiders
Military Service
Branch
Air Force
Rank
Lieutenant
Regiment
2 Squadron 109
Corps
South African Air Force 3,524
Unit
Unknown
Defence Force
UDF 24,809
Union Defence Force
Location
Country
South Africa 23,866
Locality
Unknown
Cemetery
UNITED NATIONS PUSAN CEMETERY 13
Grave Reference
Alternative Commemoration until grave found 6
Memorial
Approach walkways to the Wall of Remembrance, UNMCK, Busan. Photo: Bubbahotepblues, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_of_Remembrance,_UN_Memorial_Cemetery,_Busan,_South_Korea.jpg)
Names on Panel 13
Memorial
United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea (UNMCK)
Location
Tanggok, Nam District, Busan, South Korea
Address
woonam-ro 93beon-gil 93, Nam-gu, Busan, South Korea
Coordinates
35.12845, 129.09623 · OpenStreetMap
Panel
Panel 13
On the panel
Alternative Commemoration until grave found
Unit History
Part of
Rhodesian Air Force - Squadrons
Notes

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 19 June 2001 · via source
Capt Nortje and Lt J. Moir were briefed to conduct a bomb line patrol. Arriving over Chorwon at 10000 feet, they flew between Chorwon and Kumwa, to a position just north of the Hwachon reservoir. Here they spotted a light aircraft, which they approached. Capt Nortje identified it as a L-19 of the Republic of Korea Air Force. They then sighted another unidentified aircraft, which turned out to be a US Navy spotter aircraft. Lt Moir turned onto the tail of another aircraft, in an attempt to identify this. It was in fact a US Navy Skyraider, and unfortunately the other members of the Skyraider's flight, unable to identify him clearly as friendly, assumed his intentions to be hostile and Lt Moir was attacked and shot down by another of the Skyraiders.
Dedications

No dedications have been added yet.