Vale Bill Kilsby, Wing Commander, MBE, AFC, 1923-2021

Odd Bod Bill Kilsby passed away on 4th October 2021 after a short illness. His daughter Debra has been good enough to provide us with this brief history of his war service. Bill was one of the few Odd Bods who continued in the RAAF after the war and went on to fly key aircraft including the Canberra Bomber.

Wing Commander C.G. Kilsby – Biography

Cecil Kilsby, who became known as Bill, was sworn into the RAAF on 01/01/1942 at the age of 19, and attained his wings at the end of that year.  On New Years Day 1944, he was sent by ship to England but once there volunteered for the Burma campaign. In India he was trained to fly the Lockheed Liberator, and was second pilot in RAF 356 Squadron.  In this role he was involved in bombing raids across Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Singapore and Thailand. On June 24th 1945, Bill was the second pilot of the lead plane that successfully bombed the bridge at Kanchananaburi – the infamous ‘bridge over the River Kwai’.  By the end of the war, Bill had risen to the rank of Warrant Officer, and returned to Australia in late January 1946.

In mid 1946 he was posted to Air Navigation School in East Sale, and became one of the first pilots to fly the new Australian built Lincoln, and at the end of 1950 was transferred to Amberley to captain one of the Lincolns, and shortly after was promoted to Flight Officer and sent to captain a seven man Lincoln crew with No1 (B) Squadron during the Malayan Insurgency.  Bill returned to Amberley on 01/01/1952 and began flying Canberras. 

In 1955 he was posted to Air Trials Unit, Woomera but was firstly sent to England to collect a Vickers Valiant.  Bill was in fact, for a time, the only RAAF pilot who could fly the Valiant.  From 1959-1963 Bill was back in Amberley as Flight Commander and Temporary Commanding Officer of No 6 (B) Squadron, and back flying his beloved Canberras. In January 1959 he had been promoted to Squadron Leader.

In 1963 he took up a two year Exchange Position with the USAF, and was based at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. Here he flew B66 aircraft, a single pilot aircraft.  Returning to Australia in 1965, Bill was briefly CO of Melbourne University Squadron before deployment to Vung Tau, Vietnam where he was Commanding Officer of the support unit being set up for No 35 Squadron (Caribou) and No 9 Squadron (Iriquos).

After his stint in Vietnam Bill was promoted to Wing Commander, and spent the rest of his airforce career at Defence Headquarters in Canberra, firstly in Intelligence and then as a planner in Joint Staff. On the 11 August 1974 Bill reached the mandatory retiring age of 50, so was forced to retire from the RAAF, having served it for 32 years.  During this time he was awarded the Air Force Cross and the MBE. 

Bill Kilsby (Left) with George Smith and Doug Parry at Melbourne Shrine 2012