Flying Officer John Edmund Seaton MACALISTER (1931)

No.16 Officers’ Training Unit, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Born 18th November 1912 in Hampstead, London
Killed on active service 13th June 1940, aged 27
Buried at Upper Heyford Cemetery, Oxfordshire.

John MacAlister was one of the three sons of Mertonian Sir (George) Ian MacAlister (1897) and Lady Frances Dorothy, née Seaton.

Educated at St Paul’s School, he was an Exhibitioner in Modern History at Merton. He was an all-round athlete and obtained a Half-Blue at Oxford for swimming and water-polo.

After some years' service in the RAF Reserve, he obtained his commission in the RAF at the beginning of the war.

Whilst piloting a Handley Page Hampden, P4297, on a training flight he crashed at Iwerne Minster, Dorset. His two fellow crewmen, Pilot Officer Edgard Albert Ernest Sedgley and Aircraftman James Lennon, were also killed in the crash.

His brother Peter, also a pilot in the RAF, was killed in action in July 1945.