Identity
Person No.
32438
Old ROH no.
2135
Service No.
P2/8447
Last Name
First Name
Willem Daniel
Initials
W D
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
38
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
MVA 2,625
Motor vehicle accident
Cause of Death
Died in Military Vehicle Accident. A/Cpl W.D. Patterson was a member of a detail loading an aircraft at K-10, Chinhae, and was directing a transport vehicle that was reversing towards the aircraft. This vehicle failed to stop, and crushed A/Cpl Patterson against the aircraft's fuselage
Military Service
Branch
Air Force
Rank
Corporal
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
Alternative Commemoration until grave found
Unit History
Part of
Notes
Husband of Mrs. I. E. Patterson, of Gardens, 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
A/Cpl W.D. Patterson was a member of a detail loading an aircraft at K-10, Chinhae, and was directing a transport vehicle that was reversing towards the aircraft. This vehicle failed to stop, and crushed A/Cpl Patterson against the aircraft's fuselage. He was buried in the UN cemetery at Pusan.
Dedications
No dedications have been added yet.