Son of Henry and Agnes Killner, of Christchurch, New Zealand; husband of Mary Killner, of Sumner, Canterbury.

Searchers failed to discover the grave of KB780's crew early after the end of the war and their names were included on the Runnymede Memorial in the UK. However, in the spring of 1957, German cemetery authorities chanced upon the grave and the remains were reinterred at Rheinberg. The Bomber Command Losses record inadvertantly lists the crew as buried in Reichswald Forest. Operation Hurricane I was a maximum effort demonstration to the enemy of the Allied Air Forces' overwhelming superiority. During the night, Duisburg was hit by another RAF 1000-bomber raid, while the USAAF dispatched over 1000 bombers with some 750 escorting fighters on daylight raids in the Cologne area. AWMM