PDF
« Previous

Staats , Robert Leslie (R L)

Next »
Photo of Staats
Identity
Person No.
33062
Old ROH no.
2143
Service No.
P1/40016
Last Name
Staats 2
First Name
Robert Leslie
Initials
R L
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
1929 (±1 yr) 87
Age at Death
23
Death Record
Date of Death
17 January 1952 131
Cause code
KIA 14,779
Killed in action
Cause of Death
Killed in action 14,655
Killed in action, in North American F-51 Mustang #374. 2Lt R.L. Staats had just recently returned for a second tour of operations, and was authorised to test Mustang 374, which had just undergone a maintenance check. He was seen circling K-10 airfield but when he failed to land after half an hour, attempts were made to contact him from the Control Tower, but he failed to respond. A message was almost immediately received that a Mustang had crashed into Chinhae Bay. A search failed to find any trace of him or his aircraft, and only three days later was the aircraft eventually found. South Korean divers recovered 2Lt Staats' body
Military Service
Branch
Air Force
Rank
Second 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 23,874
Locality
KwaZulu-Natal 1,589
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


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 02 July 2001 · via source
2Lt R.L. Staats had just recently returned for a second tour of operations, and was authorised to test Mustang 374, which had just undergone a maintenance check. He was seen circling K-10 airfield but when he failed to land after half an hour, attempts were made to contact him from the Control Tower, but he failed to respond. A message was almost immediately received that a Mustang had crashed into Chinhae Bay. A search failed to find any trace of him or his aircraft, and only three days later was the aircraft eventually found. South Korean divers recovered 2Lt Staats' body and he was buried in the UN cemetery at Pusan.
Dedications

No dedications have been added yet.