Identity
Person No.
31978
Old ROH no.
2134
Service No.
P1/22053
Last Name
First Name
Francesco Antonio
Initials
F A
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
32
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 #351. Lt F.A. Montanari was leader of a flight of four Mustangs conducting an armed reconnaissance from Inchon to Majon-ni. While flying above cloud, he informed his flight that he was going below to have a closer look at a road. While flying down the side of a hill at 2000 feet, his aircraft was hit by flak, and immediately began streaming glycol coolant as he climbed again to 3000 feet. He flicked into a slight spin, recovered briefly and attempted to crash-land in a shallow riverbed, but his aircraft disintegrated on impact
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
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
Lt F.A. Montanari was leader of a flight of four Mustangs conducting an armed reconnaissance from Inchon to Majon-ni. While flying above cloud, he informed his flight that he was going below to have a closer look at a road. While flying down the side of a hill at 2000 feet, his aircraft was hit by flak, and immediately began streaming glycol coolant as he climbed again to 3000 feet. He flicked into a slight spin, recovered briefly and attempted to crash-land in a shallow riverbed, but his aircraft disintigrated on impact.
Dedications
No dedications have been added yet.