Stirling IV LJ850 crash site located

If you plot its last known position -
"Last known position of LJ850: 49deg58minN 00deg39minW at 0050 hours" one would assume that it would have been flying at ? 8000 - 10000 ft to clear the coast, AA flak, etc. Its 1 of 3 aircraft so would German radar say "send up the night fighters" or "we have enough happening west of us leave them".

If it had a mechanical problem at that position and height, would you not say to your passengers something like "will try and head for nearest land and you lot jump", followed by the rest of the crew. That would have put a number of paras in the Dieppe area either alive or washed up on the beaches. Even if the plane was lower you would still make for nearest land, to reach the area Mr Graves speculates then the aircraft would need to be flying for quite a while with all onboard a failing aircraft - doesn't make sense to me.

TD

 

Hello ,

Please have a look there :

My father Flight Lieutenant S F Maunder

That's the plane Tony Graves is planning to dig . See father's last mission in pdf , 2 parts .

 

From Laurent's revelation it appears that the Daily Mail have misled everyone.....Larent also posted the detail of the actual Stirling loss at the Calvados site in his post #23.

To publish,did the Daily Mail get the information on the quoted LJ 850 project from Tony Graves,if not, it suggests they did not appreciate the fact that the actual aircraft that crashed at Aignerville was LJ 681 (and not LJ 850.)

 

Laurent, just to clarify that we're not running in different directions....
Are you saying that the assumed Stirling wreckage with 23 passengers LJ850 is NOT the one Tony Graves has/is excavating?

Maunder was on Stirling IV LJ631 shot down by friendly fire on 24/5 August, not 18 June?
I understood that part of the positive ID was from a ring with initial AC and "To Vera" which fitted with Chambers in the LJ850 crew.

So which one are you referring to - this being incorrect and should be LJ631 or what?

 

Chambers was in the crew of Lancaster ND739, lost on 6 June 1944. The only connection to the lost Stirling is who is attempting to dig up wreckage.

After reading the threads Laurent and others have posted, it seems apparent Graves has made a mistake. As to the LJ850, it is quite possible the aircraft came down in the mountains. From this old thread we see just how hard it is to find anything after this many years: Wellington X lost out of Foggia Main Italy

 

I wonder if Graves is actually bothered if it's the right a/c or not, as long as he gets a dig out of it. And like ND739, it appears he may be using the good old emotional "relatives" trick to try and persuade the French. Hopefully, after the ND739 sham, they'll stick to their guns and refuse permission. I have a healthy mistrust of some of these people ever since watching a televised dig of a B.O.B Hurricane back in the 70's. Strange how another so called aviation archaeologist who assisted in the Channel 4 documentary, on excavating the site, came across the seat, then an unopened parachute, then the instrument panel, (now? what should be between the seat and the instrument panel, and attached to a parachute) but no !! he carried on down until he found the prized Merlin engine. It was only when they back filled the hole that "surprisingly" they allegedly came across human remains, how convenient.

 

I understand we are now aware that TG is looking at the wrong aircraft, however that does not resolve the problem of what happened to LJ850.

Trundling around the garden on the sit-on this afternoon allowed me time to think a little more and looking at this from another direction, and I have some questions for our RAF experts.

This was supposedly a 3 aircraft mission, and apparently 2 of them turned back because of "bad weather/cloud". Irrespective of that when they returned to base surely someone (the Intelligence Officer) would ask "Hello you two where's the third" "Ah we last saw him about here (approximate co-ordinates)". So the wait would start for the return of LJ 850. At some time they would say its overdue, followed later by its missing.
Would the RAF then ask the Base and the crews of the other 2 aircraft what they knew and when they knew it for what happened that night. Open up maps showing approximate course etc. It might be possible to contact the local Maquis enroute to look out for approximately 20 men.
I would assume that someone at some point needs to make a report to whoever explaining the loss of this plane, its crew and its passengers, and that report would contain details from the other aircraft crews including 'chatter' between then and maps showing courses.

Am I wrong or are there other avenues to explore to try and find out what happenrd to this particlar flight and its passengers??

TD

 

The attached adds some gen vis-a-vis the Maquis and debriefing of the two other crews, TD.

 

To KevinBattle ,

Yes there's absolutly no doubt about this : LJ631 has been pinpointed by Tony Graves , but LJ850 is still missing . Or to say it another manner , what chances that two Stirlings crashed exactly at the same spot ? Maybe honestly ( ? ) Tony was fooled by the farm named after 18 June and he sticks on that clue .
The problem is that relatives of the missing crew are now involved , guess the result .

 

Thanks alieneyes, interesting reading but I would guess there should be more that was written or reported and noted in the summer/autumn of 1944 by the actual RAF

TD

edited to add:
Now why didn't I look there before

Reference: WO 361/732
Description:
France: special operations by the SAS (Special Air Service); parachutists dropped by Stirling LJ 850, 620 Squadron
Date: 1945 Feb 21 - 1945 Sep 19
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department: WE/M 890 Enclosure 15
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Closure status: Open Document, Open Description
Access conditions: Open on Transfer
Record opening date: 22 April 2011


Anyone have a copy before I ask Drew for one??

 

I would think that when LJ 850 failed to return,the FTR would be noted in the squadron ORB and the usual paperwork would have been raised to record the event....administrative procedures would be put in hand for NOK to be informed and intelligence collected from any clandestine sources available.If the aircraft crash was known to the German authorities,general circumstances of the crash location without giving any intelligence,crew deaths and POWs would be forwarded to the British government via the conduit of the London Swiss Embassy of the appointed Protecting Power,Switzerland.

Additionally,in the case of the intended Houndsworth drop in the Morvan,the unit would report back to "London" that the operation had been aborted although in some circumstances this was not possible and successful communication was always likely to be subject to delays.

I wonder if No1 SAS included the number of aircraft over the DZ, although in the case the cloud cover was 10/10 and the area was subject to rain and fog by the time of the intended drop.

The Morvan was well covered by a number of Maquis units and I would think that much did not happen without their knowledge....one unit buried a RAF crew in their own forest cemetery and as far as I know this was conducted without any interference from the Germans.This crew's remains were removed from the Morvan Maquis cemetery to Nantes in 1961.

 

Folks, I'm sorry I raised this, perhaps it was click bait after all, but I had hoped this would reveal the resting places of 23 missing men. That was the purpose of creating the thread, but it seems that others have equally jumped before establishing the facts which then got into the press.
Nonetheless, the question does remain. What happened?
With 16 paras on board, the aircraft should have been above likely rising ground, from all accounts it seems to have made it to the DZ but thereafter went missing.
No German claim, no radio message of problems and returning over the Channel would surely be at sufficient height for bale out,
In any event, with a defective aircraft, surely they'd all want to be on land and not ditch unless unavoidable.

It does seem that whatever happened, did so without warning. With no trace of any of the 23, no wonder the accepted view was that it came down in the Channel. My feeling is that it flew into high ground unexpectedly, given poor visibility and possibly being driven by the want of a successful drop.

We know bombers can disappear without trace on land, but for no one to have any clue......?

 

I'm hoping, this week, to see whats inside the TNA file I mentioned in post 50 above and if there is ny further details that may have been overlooked - not that I'm an expert, but sometimes looking at something from a different angle may help.

Looking at maps of the area, there are some good hills around, but as Harry says not much would have gone on without the Maquis knowing about it. However one thing I did see was that there are a number of large lakes in the Morvan National Park, and wondered if a plane went down in one of those if anyone would notice and it would explain no wreckage

Anyway thats further surmising without trying to work from known facts

TD

PS - Kevin - dont be sorry as we seem to have proved TG is looking in the wrong place - all we need to try and do now is trace the real place where LJ850 went/might have gone down, and maybe solve a problem for those who have no voice anymore.

 

I thought it strange that the British authorities did not respond to the report of a mass grave location in Calvados reported to be related to LJ 850...there was a different response when research evidence in the about 15 years ago pointed to the Great War mass grave at Fromells which had been created behind their lines by the Germans without any grave markers.

They must have known that the aircraft which crashed there had been accounted for and it wasn't the missing LJ 850....further they must have been been confident that LJ 850 was likely lost at sea from early postwar investigations and have identified the route as outbound. Presumably nothing was heard from the aircraft from being over the Channel on the outbound route.

I think if LJ 850 had crashed over mainland France,wreckage etc would have been found by now.......seems that this particular aircraft loss case will still be a closed file.

 

My opinion is that Tony Graves' purpose is not genuine , but why ? Has he a peculiar interest in digging that Stirling here in Normandy ?
There must be some good reasons that French authorities do not grant any excavation at Aignerville but not because of a suspected war grave .

 

Laurent,
I smile at your opinion of Graves not being genuine, only because i have a letter from a volunteer who attended the dig of Lancaster ND739 by Graves, also in France, which may explain why the French authorities are holding back permission on this one.

 

I have a letter written by Sgt Wilding’s mother to my father about her missing son. Attached is the reply from the Adjutant of 190 Sqdn

 

899930 Pte. John Seymour Bowen, No. 1 SAS
https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2627066/john-seymour-bowen/



Staffordshire Sentinel 5th November 1945