Flying Sergeant Laurence Charles Haines - A31576
Flying Sergeant Laurence (Aussie) Haines was born in London on 4 May 1904. At the time of his christening his father was a clerk in the war office. [1 ] Haines worked as an electrical mechanic for 18 years and for Siemens in London for most of that time. He married in 1928 and came to Australia with his family in the 1930s and went to Wiluna to work on the gold mines. [2] It was while living in the isolated northern goldfields that Haines learnt that necessity really was the mother of invention. His ingenious inventions when stationed in Japan as a Non-Commissioned Office (NCO) with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) were featured in the Western Mail newspaper in Perth. Western Mail 31 August 1950. p.43. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article39104549 Haines enlisted in the Interim RAAF as an electrical fitter after moving to Melbourne from Wiluna in 1939. He had been in partnership in an electrical store in Wiluna which was unsuccessful financially and went bankrupt i