Halifax Crew Remembered

[Stephen White]

I was sat in Costa Coffee this morning reading the paper and came across the following article.

Dutch town honours RAF war heroes 62 years on | the Daily Mail

I can't add anymore than the article already says, other than to say thank you to ALL those concerned, especially those in Holland.

Stephen

[Owen]

Name: BUTLER, GEORGE HERBERT
Initials: G H
Nationality: United Kingdom
Rank: Sergeant (Air Gnr.)
Regiment/Service: Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Unit Text: 78 Sqdn.
Age: 21
Date of Death: 25/05/1944
Service No: 1585469
Additional information: Son of George Herbert Butler, and of Alice Butler, of Tottenham, Middlesex.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: 24. J. 5.
Cemetery: JONKERBOS WAR CEMETERY

Name: MARSTON, NORMAN ALLAN
Initials: N A
Nationality: United Kingdom
Rank: Flying Officer (Bomb Aimer)
Regiment/Service: Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Unit Text: 78 Sqdn.
Age: 24
Date of Death: 25/05/1944
Service No: 136912
Awards: DFC
Additional information: Son of Alfred and Ethel Marston; husband of Marjorie Marston, of Chingford, Essex.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Coll. grave 24. J. 2-4.
Cemetery: JONKERBOS WAR CEMETERY

Name: HENDERSON, JOSEPH
Initials: J
Nationality: United Kingdom
Rank: Flight Sergeant (W.Op.)
Regiment/Service: Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Unit Text: 78 Sqdn.
Age: 33
Date of Death: 25/05/1944
Service No: 1071348
Additional information: Son of Joseph and Mary Henderson, of Liverpool; husband of Clara Henderson, of Edge Hill, Liverpool.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Coll. grave 24. J. 2-4.
Cemetery: JONKERBOS WAR CEMETERY

Name: WHITE, WILLIAM JOHN
Initials: W J
Nationality: United Kingdom
Rank: Sergeant (Flt. Engr.)
Regiment/Service: Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Unit Text: 78 Sqdn.
Age: 22
Date of Death: 25/05/1944
Service No: 1099290
Additional information: Son of William Charles and Ellen White, of Birmingham.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Coll. grave 24. J. 2-4.
Cemetery: JONKERBOS WAR CEMETERY

Name: PETERSON, SIDNEY GLEN
Initials: S G
Nationality: Canadian
Rank: Flying Officer (Nav.)
Regiment/Service: Royal Canadian Air Force
Unit Text: 78 (R.A.F.) Sqdn
Age: 21
Date of Death: 25/05/1944
Service No: J/14208
Additional information: Son of Lawrence A. and Ethel Peterson, of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Coll. grave 24. J. 2-4.
Cemetery: JONKERBOS WAR CEMETERY

Name: LEBLANC, JOSEPH THOMAS LLOYD
Initials: J T L
Nationality: Canadian
Rank: Flight Sergeant (Air Gnr.)
Regiment/Service: Royal Canadian Air Force
Unit Text: 78 (R.A.F.) Sqdn
Age: 29
Date of Death: 25/05/1944
Service No: R/174719
Additional information: Son of John N. and Lucy Ann Le Blanc; husband of Ruth S. Le Blanc, of Barrie, Ontario, Canada.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Coll. grave 24. J. 2-4.
Cemetery: JONKERBOS WAR CEMETERY

Name: WILSON, ERIC BENJAMIN
Initials: E B
Nationality: United Kingdom
Rank: Pilot Officer (Pilot)
Regiment/Service: Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Unit Text: 78 Sqdn.
Date of Death: 25/05/1944
Service No: 160162
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Coll. grave 24. J. 2-4.
Cemetery: JONKERBOS WAR CEMETERY

[spidge]

Our fighters for freedom will never be forgotten!

[Peter Clare]

globeandmail.com : Canadian airmen honoured in Dutch burial

From the Canadian press

[52nd Airborne]

The bomber was lost on a raid to the railways at Aachen.

442 Aircraft - 226 Lancasters, 162 Halifaxes and 16 Mosquitoes. All groups, (except 5 Group) attacked 2 railway yards at Aachen. Aachen west and Rothe Erde (east of the town). These were the important links in the railway system between Germany and France.

The Aachen report records that the 2 railway yards were the targets attacked, with the railways to the east of Aachen being particularly hard hit. Because this was a German town Bomber Command sent more aircraft than normal for railway raids and many bombs fell in Aachen itself and the villages near the yards. The Monhiem war- industry factory and the towns gasworks were among many buildings destroyed. 207 people were killed in Aachen and 121 were seriously injured. 14,800 people were bombed out. Several villages near the railway yards also incurred casualties; Eilendorf, near Rothe Erde yards, had 52 people killed.

The Aachen report comments on the great number of high explosive bombs and the small number of incendiaries dropped. There were only 6 large fires. 288 high explosive bombs were found to be duds, approx 10% of those dropped.

Aircraft lost - 18 Halifaxes and 7 Lancasters.

Source - BCWD 1939-45

[52nd Airborne]

Interesting to note:

Halifax LV906 sister aircraft LV905 (10 Sqn) was also lost on ths raid!

[Owen]

Another story from Canada with comments from the mens' relatives.
London Free Press - National News - Canadian airmen to be buried at last

More than 60 years after two Canadian airmen were shot down over the Netherlands in the Second World War, their families are returning to Europe to bury the men's recently recovered remains.

For Roy Peterson of Vancouver, who has made several trips to Holland to visit an empty war grave that bears only the name of his brother, Flying Officer Sidney Peterson, the trip brings closure.

For Michael LeBlanc of Acton, who has come to know his uncle, Flight Sgt. Joseph LeBlanc, intimately through his letters and a fascination with military history, the journey is one driven by profound pride.

"I really feel as if I've known the man intimately," LeBlanc said. "It's an odd experience to run around with a ghost, and very rewarding."

Peterson hasn't been able to let go of his brother either.

"It's been going on for so long, it still gets to you and drains you," said the 70-year-old, who, along with his five children, will be in Jonkerbos for a funeral service and burial Wednesday.

His brother, who was raised in Winnipeg, was among seven airmen killed May 25, 1944, when a German fighter plane shot down their British Halifax Bomber LV905.

The crew was involved in an attack on German rail lines in the days leading up to D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-held Europe.

Only two bodies were found at the time of the crash. It was believed the other five crew members remained in the wreckage in the fields near the village of Hank.

A man who had witnessed the crash as a teenager was able to help salvage teams pinpoint the location decades later.

The bomber crashed on what was then marshy land. But over time, drainage and land reclamation projects buried the wreckage about four metres deep in a farmer's field.

The salvage effort took almost five years. The remains were finally recovered last September.

LeBlanc, who went back to Holland for the recovery last fall, said he feels privileged to be accompanying his uncle's only surviving sibling, Ramona Parker, for the funeral and burial.

Joseph LeBlanc of Grand Casapedia, Que., enlisted with the Forces on Aug. 7, 1942, almost immediately after his brother went missing at Dieppe.

His nephew said his uncle had no illusions of glory or heroism.

"He did it out of a sense of duty," said LeBlanc, 57, a hospital switchboard operator.

LeBlanc and Peterson have nothing but praise and gratitude for the Dutch people and government for paying for the entire salvage, estimated to cost almost $400,000.

"The locals raised 35,000 euros within 10 days," said Peterson, an award-winning editorial cartoonist.

The Netherlands is believed to have as many as 300 war-time crash sites that have not yet been salvaged.

Peterson said he feels lucky that the 62-year-old mystery of his brother's whereabouts has been solved.

"I'm just glad it's finally done," he said.

"There was some talk maybe they should just be left in the farmer's field, but it just didn't somehow seem right. He should have a proper burial."

[Owen]

Story from goDutch.com 23/11/05
goDutch.com :: Personal effects in 1944 downed bomber help identifying Canadian airmen

Wreckage LV 905 yields human remains
Personal effects in 1944 downed bomber help identifying Canadian airmen


HANK, the Netherlands – The recovery of the wreck of a RAF bomber which crashed near this village on the edge of the Biesbosch moors on May 25, 1944, has yielded remains of the five men aboard the Halifax LV 905. Identification however is time consuming and could prove to be impossible since most of the bone fragments are very small.

Much of the front fuselage and wings had plowed through a creek dike (since leveled and used to fill the creek) and burrowed deep into the spongy soil. Among the recovered 14,000 kilograms of wreckage are the four engines and propellers, guns and cannons and ammunition as well.

Personal effects found include two whistles, part of a cigarette case, Canadian and British coins and a pocket watch. Two of the seven downed crewmen were Canadians, four from England and South Africa, while the 21-year old captain was from Rhodesia.

Some of the relatives of the seven flyers witnessed part of the recovery and preferred separate internments. British policy however dictates that the crewmen will share a communal grave.

Graveyard of planes

On May 24, 1944, Rhodesian pilot Eric ‘Tug’ Wilson flew his bomber from a base in Southern England to join other heavy bombers for a night raid on targets in Germany. The purpose of this and other sorties was to inflict damage or eradicate railway lines, bridges and other infrastructure in preparation of the impending invasion of Europe.

Wilson’s crew consisted of South African co-pilot Allan Marston, radio operator Joe Henderson, engineer John White and tail gunner George Butler, all from England. Navigator Sidney Peterson and gunner Thomas Lloyd LeBlanc were the two Canadians. The plane carried a bomb load of 6,000 kilograms.

Following the raid on a train switching yard near Aachen, the aircraft headed home just after midnight. German Messerschmidt night fighters scrambled from a base near Sint Truiden in Belgium to intercept the lumbering giants. Of the 432 bombers dispatched that night, 25 failed to make it back to their bases. Over 190 airmen went missing. Ten of the downed bombers crashed in the Netherlands, then increasingly a graveyard of Allied planes.

The first Halifax to fall victim to the radar-equipped Messerschmidts was the LW 137 piloted by Thomas Rawlinson. The plane caught fire, but three crew members ejected safely and eventually wound up in a German POW camp. The other four perished when the plane crashed near Geertruidenberg.

Luftwaffe pilot Karl-Heinz Scherfling then turned his attention to another huge target, the LV 905. Cannon shells of his Bf 110 G4 ripped through the Halifax which went down in steep descent, already on fire and likely out of control. It flipped over and broke into two when it crashed in a meadow. The largest part of the bomber then corkscrewed through the dike deep into the spongy peat soil.

Recovery foundation

The bodies of the two tail gunners were thrown from the crashing wreckage. That same morning, a local man, Anton van der Pluijm, was forced by the Germans to help clear the debris and take away the remains of the airmen.

The Halifax bomber crash site was known for decades to the older inhabitants of Hank and surrounding area. From 1989 on, Van der Pluijm, by then a volunteer at the local Archives Foundation, and others began tracing the history of the Halifax bomber and its crew. They eventually pieced together nearly every minute of the plane’s final hours. Their other aim was to dig up the aircraft’s wreckage.

After contacting the relatives of the seven LV 905 crew members, the Archives Foundation prepared the actual recovery of the wreckage. With the assistance of the municipality of Werkendam, which now owns the wreckage, a special recovery foundation was formed in 2003.

Prince Bernhard, who had been a Dutch wartime commander, brought the members of the foundation into contact with a similar group involved in the recovery of a downed RAF bomber near Wilnis. Much of the Hank recovery cost, estimated at about $300,000, was paid by the Dutch government.

Memorial

Besides determining how and where the remains of the crew members are to be burried, the foundation, together with the municipality, also must decide what to do with the various pieces of the wreckage. The Biesbosch Museum already has expressed an interest in obtaining some pieces, while larger items, such as the engines, could become part of a memorial.

There still are an estimated 2,000 WWII plane wrecks buried in the Dutch soil and waterways, and in the Dutch section of the North Sea. It is believed that well over 6,000 planes crashed in the Netherlands and in its territorial waters. According to the Department of Defense, most of the locations of the remaining wrecks are unknown. Over 400 of these likely contain human remains.