I was given a letter today via an 85 year old woman who in 1977 worked at RAF Gatow in Berlin. She wrote that she was aware that the Russians had returned the remains of four RAF Airmen From a Lancaster found in the East Zone. The Russians returned the Aircrew and had sent a guard of honour at the Glienicke Bridge. She was later told that the airmen were buried without any relatives being present. I can only presume that they had been unidentified as it was 1977 when the bodies were discovered hence the non attendance of mourners. I am sure that the RAF would have buried them with a ceremony. Does anyone remember this occurrence In 1977 Below is a cutting from a services newspaper concerning the incident. Date or paper details unknown
From the CWGC Annual Report April 1977 The remains of 44 casualties, from both wars, were discovered in isolated sites in France, Germany and Sweden and re-buried in war cemeteries; it was possible to identify four of these. Among them were the remains of four of the crew of an RAF Lancaster bomber shot down over Berlin which were discovered and handed over by the Russian Army and buried with military honours in Berlin War Cemetery. The unusually warm summer melted the snow covering another bomber which had crashed in a remote part of Swedish Lapland in 1942; the identified remains of the three Canadian airmen recovered were buried with military honours in Kviberg Cemetery at Gothenburg. The wording could be clearer but if three of the four out of forty four recoveries that were identified were the Canadians in Lapland I think that it is indeed unlikely that the four in Berlin were identified. However it is possible that this has since been done (or at least the crew in general) using the engine numbers. The CWGC would seem to be the place to find out.
Hi Scans are from "A Bridge Yesterday, The Story of RAF Gatow by R E Miller" An RAF Publication from 1990 (ish). Flt Lt Miller was ex boss at RAF Gatow. Gus
Although the Gatow article is correct in stating that engines were sometimes swapped between air-frames this would be comparatively rare between overhauls of engines and a record would have been kept in any case of complete engine movements. When I was starting my career at Rolls Royce back in the late 60s we still had a file with the history of Merlins (which were still in service with some airforces) with which this could have been tracked provided that the numbers the Russians had supplied were engine numbers and not just individual part numbers.
Lancaster Mark 1 aircraft were equipped with British built RR Merlins ,Mark 111 aircraft were built with Packard Merlins.It was common to find that Lancaster aircraft had a combination of sourced engines, independent of the Mark the Lancaster was initially equipped with.It was a feature of maintaining front line Bomber Command Lancaster availability...no Lancaster Mark 1 or 111 availability was left to OEM...a combination of RR and Packard engines was common in Bomber Command.Mark 11 Lancasters were a different matter and only 300 of this mark were produced with the Hercules engine. Rolls Royce production of the Merlin ceased in 1950,if you like a victim of the success of the jet engine..I recollect on the Lincoln B2,there was no problem in obtaining Packard built spare engines and we had facilities on a number of staging posts to places like to the Far East to change engines. The important point regarding #1 posting is that in maintenance records where engine serial numbers and manufacturer would be recorded by the RAF and any aircraft could be traced to the individual aircraft and from there to the squadron or other unit. I would say that the four individual aircrew could not be identified after passing through Russian recovery and that the CWGC had them interned as British Unknown Airmen in the Berlin War Cemetery.The CWGC should have records of the passage of these remains but the principle of recognition and identity remains as to them being interred as unknown airmen.
Excellent post. Ford UK had a plant in Manchester that made them too, didn't they? EDIT: Made Merlins, I mean.
Indeed they did. However RR Derby maintained an overview and acted as coordinator of development on all Merlins. Although Derby stopped making Merlins in the 50s production did not stop but was subcontracted as there were sufficient users of the engine to need replacement engines and spares. Indeed during my time at RR the Chilean Airforce was still using the engine in marine recce Lancasters and if memory serves there were still some Lancastrians and Yorks around. RR maintained a card based service history on each engine made and most users cooperated by reporting on their engines. This was of mutual benefit in ensuring availability of spares etc. I was working on some early spares production scheduling computer systems at the time. By my time the older cards had been archived onto micro film but whether this survived the first nationalisation is another matter.
The demand for engines for the various aircraft powered by the Merlin put production pressure on to RR.It was envisaged that their factories at Derby,Crewe and Glasgow could not cope with an anticipated 18000 units by 1943 and Merlin manufacturing was outsourced to Fords at Trafford Park (28000 employed by the various companies on Trafford Park during the war).Additional capacity had been anticipated by Beaverbrook who proposed that Fords of America could undertake outsourcing.However Henry Ford 1 had difference of opinion with his son Edsel whether the work could be taken on.Fords at the time as the US war economy had been formed had orders from the US government. It was thought that the car manufacturer Packard would be incapable of working to the fine tolerances of RR but this concern was discounted as Packard proved.The US already had the Merlin blueprints from Beavorbrook after the fall of France and an agreement was signed in September 1940.Within a year,in August 1941,Packard had their first engine running on test which became known in the RAF as the Merlin 28 and by the USAAF as the Packard V- 1650-1 which the USAAF wished to engine on their P40. For this engine the British priority was to power the Canadian built Hurricanes,then equip Lancasters and then Mosquitos. These engines differed from the RR produced Merlin 22 in that US magnetos were fitted and there was a lack of SU carburettors which could not be manufactured in time in the US,therefore a Bendix was initially used.Thus there were slight differences between the RR Merlin and the outsourced Packard Merlin which the Air Ministry denoted by designating the Lancaster as a Mark 1 (RR Merlins) or a Mark 111(Packard Merlins).The engines were interchangeable as engine logic would expect and it was not unusual to find a Lancaster being powered by a combination of engine types.Interestingly what did occur at time during a major service which would involve engine changes,the fitting of a Packard set to a Lancaster Mark1 would turn it into a Mark 111 in all but name and vice versa.When all covers were on the two Marks of aircraft were indistinguishable. Reality..... I cannot see Group HQ ,Bomber Command HQ accepting daily availability from BC stations stating that aircraft had been declared u/s waiting for the right Merlin for a particular Lancaster Mark designation.....and of course that didn't happened because the aircraft would fly with any combination of RR and Packard manufactured engines. I cannot recognise Lancasters operating with the Chilean air force..... perhaps it was the 30 or so Lincoln B2s (Packard built Merlins) which were sold to the Argentine air force. In May 1952 54 Lancaster Mark 1s were provided to the French air force under the Western Union, a project of NATO for the French to be involved in North Atlantic MR.These were upgraded to that role and the ASR role by AVRO. Postwar,AVRO had the Royal Egypt Air Force as a client who took a number of refurbished Lancaster Mark 1s amounting to a little more than a flight and delivered from mid to the end of 1950. Lancaster and Lincoln B1 airframes were used extensively in the late 1940s and early 1950s as flying test beds for jet engines by a number of companies but I cannot see much activity later than the mid 1960s...the Merlin piston job had had its day.As squadrons relinquished their Lincoln B2s at the end of 1955,these became feedstock for test beds ...many as the Lancasters went under the axe at the scrapyard.
As a result of information from Australian RAF researcher John Williams I can advise members of the forum that a book “Bomber Command Failed To Return the Battle of Berlin “ by Fighting High Ltd has covered this incident and can confirm that the two Graves were rededicated in a ceremony on the 27th of April 2016 with the words Two Airmen of the 1939-1945 War 3rd January 1944 Members of the crew of Lancaster JB640 Royal Air Force Known Unto God” Apparantly a machine gun recovered from the aircraft had JB 640 painted on it. There was also a serial number on the propellor linking it to the Aircraft of 156 Squadron. The Aircraft was a Pathfinder took off on 2nd January 1944 from RAF Warboys. There has been much speculation as to why it took so long to confirm the link of the machine gun and Propellor and the burial site of the crew. The Article in the book was written by Nicolle Russell. Surviving relatives attended the ceremony in Berlin. Excellent book by the way, I have a copy to give to the lady who generated this story.
Family of RAF pilot born in Liverpool sought This BBC item then explains the reference to the Halifaz... Families of lost WW2 pilots sought but then details 3 crew from JB640 and three from Halifax LK709 The Lancaster crew were JDR Cromarty LN Lapthorne FE Woolven DFBurtonshaw NH Colebatch RJ Collens KSJ Chapman Chorley 1944 states the aircraft wreckage was found in 1976 in East Berlin, with the Halifax being found in a lake. It's possible that both aircraft could have crashed into the lake (presumably now built over, else why would they have been found?) several weeks apart..... Theo Boiten posted on 12 o'clock high forum that his records show: Lancaster JB640 156 Sqdn 2Jan44 - Luftwaffe and Allied Air Forces Discussion Forum Ofw. Kurt Welter: 4 5./JG302 4-mot Berlin 02.55 156 Sqn Lancaster ND380 or JB640 The bullet holes in the propellor were 13mm, indicating a nightfighter attack, probably single seater. 10 Recently Identified RAF Airmen Remembered in Berlin Service Wiki has: Kurt Welter (25 February 1916 – 7 March 1949) was a German Luftwaffe fighter ace and the most successful jet expert of World War II. A flying ace or fighter ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during aerial combat. He claimed a total of 63 aerial victories—that is, 63 aerial combat encounters resulting in the destruction of the enemy aircraft—achieved in 93 combat missions. He recorded 56 victories at night, including 33 Mosquitos, and scored more aerial victories from a jet fighter aircraft than anyone else in World War II and possibly in aviation history. However this score is a matter of controversy; research of Royal Air Force losses suggests Welter overclaimed Mosquito victories considerably. On 2 September 1943, Welter was transferred to 5. Staffel (5th squadron) of Jagdgeschwader 301 (JG 301), a night fighter squadron that experimented with the use of largely radar-less single-seat Focke-Wulf Fw 190A-5 and Fw 190A-6 fighter aircraft by night, often equipped with the FuG 350 Naxos radar detector, used in the form of German night-fighter operations without AI radar — due to Düppel interference from RAF Bomber Command aircraft. These free ranging interception operations were called Wilde Sau (wild boar). On his first Wilde Sau intercept mission against Allied bombers on the night of 22 September 1943, Welter shot down two Allied four-engine bombers. He shot down a further two on his third mission on the night of 3 October 1943. By the beginning of April, he had accumulated 17 victories in only 15 missions. Subsequently, on 10 May 1944 Welter was awarded the German Cross in Gold. Leutnant Welter was transferred to 5. Staffel/Jagdgeschwader 300 (JG 300) on 7 July 1944. Aerial victory claims Foreman, Matthews and Parry, authors of Luftwaffe Night Fighter Claims 1939 – 1945, list 58 nocturnal victory claims, numerically ranging from 1 to 59, omitting the tenth claim. In addition to the nocturnal victory claims, authors Lorant and Goyat of Jagdgeschwader 300 "Wilde Sau" list five further day-time claims.
