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Duberley , Leroy William (L W)

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Identity
Person No.
39273
Service No.
Unknown
Last Name
First Name
Leroy William
Initials
L W
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
24
Death Record
Cause code
KIA 14,780
Killed in action
Cause of Death
Killed in action, shot down in Mozambique (at Mapai). Believed to have been carrying explosives to be used in Operation Uric and hit by a RPG7 or AAA., in Aerospatiale SA3330 Puma C #164. Also killed was the SAAF aircrew and 14 Rhodesian soldiers
Military Service
Rank
Corporal
Regiment
Unknown
Secondary Unit
INTAF
Defence Force
RSF 2,789
Rhodesian Security Forces
Operation
Operation
Dates
1979-09-01 to 1979-09-07
About
Operation Uric / Bootlace (Sept 1979) — includes Bell R6098 (Wesson) and Mapai Puma losses.
Notes

No additional information known at this time

Research notes

Geldenhuys, Prop. Rhodesian War Casualties. 3rd printing. JustDone / Lulu, 2009 (Rhodesia: Roll of Honour).
Geldenhuys scrape duplicate PersonNumber 49233 deleted 27 Aug 2026 (Duberly spelling of Duberley, Leroy William, Cpl Rhodesian Engineers, Mapai Puma.)
4 Sep 2026: Regiment leftover "Rhodesian Corps of Engineers" (a branch, not a specific regiment) moved to Corps, per John's decision on the broader Regiment/Corps field-swap review.
Col (rt) Graham du Toit Last Post 6 Sep 2026 (Mapai Puma 164 shootdown, Operation Uric): confirmed (Graham spells "Duberly", ROH has "Duberley" -- not changed, a plausible spelling variant, not a discrepancy).
Col (rt) Graham du Toit Last Post 6 Sep 2026: today's fuller post gives ServiceNo 79641, differing from this record's 646478. All four Rhodesian Corps of Engineers casualties in this incident show a similar mismatch -- suggests a transcription issue in one source rather than one-off errors. Flagged, not overwritten.
16 Sep 2026, ServiceNo contamination sweep: the stored ServiceNo '646478' was CLEARED. It was not a reading of this man's record. PersonNumbers 39270 to 39275 -- 6 consecutive records -- all carried the identical number, which belongs to the record at the head of that run (39270, Dube, Stanford (S)). A value repeated down an unbroken block of PersonNumbers is a forward-fill import artefact, not men who shared a service number; the pattern holds across 850 such runs on this roll and is independently confirmed by Mike Sandham's research log, which attaches such numbers to the head of the run 167 times against 6 contradictions (all examined). No replacement is guessed: this man's real service number is simply not known, and a blank field says so honestly where another man's number did not.
25 Sep 2026, Rhodesian squadron split: this record was moved from the combined entity "1 Squadron (RSF)" to "1 Squadron, Rhodesian Corps of Engineers". That entity held both the Rhodesian Air Force flying squadron and the Rhodesian Corps of Engineers squadron of the same number, which are unrelated units; it was created by a cleanup that split shared squadron names by Force alone, and Force does not separate two Rhodesian squadrons. This record is assigned on the evidence of its own Corps column naming the Rhodesian Corps of Engineers outright, not on the squadron number.

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