British Plot - Oak Ridge Cemetery - Arcadia, Florida, USA
Posted by: BoomersOTR
N 27° 13.564 W 081° 52.229
17R E 413806 N 3011774
A Commonwealth War Grave site for 23 Royal Air Force Cadets that trained in Florida during the Second World War.
Waymark Code: WM11BQB
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 09/23/2019
Views: 2
During WW II Royal Air Force Cadets trained in the United States to become fighter pilots. The cadets buried in Arcadia were among 15,000 British troops trained in aerial warfare in the United States during World War II. They were shipped across the Atlantic simply because there was no place closer to home where they could train.
British tradition states that British soldiers are to be buried where they fall. In the United States there are 952 identified British graves at 448 sites, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Arcadia's Oak Ridge Cemetery, with the 23 British graves among the burial sites of residents, contains one of the largest congregations of British war dead.
Nineteen were killed in training flight crashes that were blamed on primitive aircraft and overzealous young pilots eager to learn too much in too little time. Two were killed in a car accident, another of meningitis and still another of pneumonia.
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