Audet was born on March 13, 1922 in Lethbridge, Alberta, the youngest and sixth child of Paul and Edewisca Audet who were both born in Quebec. He grew up on the family ranch, in the Milk River valley, about two miles east of "Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park".
In his first contact with enemy aircraft on December 29, 1944 he destroyed five planes. By the end of January 1945 he had claimed a further five victories and shared a sixth. He lost his own life on March 3, 1945.
With the exception of one year at Milk River Valley School he received all of his education to grade twelve in Coutts, Alberta.
He was an outstanding athlete and loved all sports including hockey, basketball, and baseball. He was offered a position in Lethbridge to instruct and coach these sports, but he made up his mind to be a flyer in the war.
Too young to enlist, he attended business college in Lethbridge in 1940-1941, then worked as a stenographer and bookkeeper at the air force base at High River. Audet enlisted for service in the Royal Canadian Air Force on August 7, 1941 and received his pilot’s wings in October 1942.
He was then posted to the United Kingdom where he received five months of advanced operational training followed by non-fighter operations.
On September 20th, 1944, he was transferred to a R.C.A.F. Spitfire Unit, 411 Squadron. Later that year on 29 December, piloting a Spitfire IXe he destroyed two Bf-109s and three Fw-190s in five to seven minutes over Osnabrück. On March 3, 1945, Flight Lieutenant Audet was strafing a German train west of Munster.
The train returned fire and Audet’s Spitfire crashed to the ground.
There is some uncertainty as to whether he died in the crash or was captured, but his body was never recovered. Audet had flown more than fifty combat sorties and added a bar to his Distinguished Flying Cross.
Flight Lieutenant Richard Joseph Audet has no know grave and his name is recorded on panel 278 of the Air Forces Memorial, or Runnymede Memorial, in England, and the Lethbridge cenotaph.
