ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 52754
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| Date: | Friday 26 June 1942 |
| Time: | 00:42 |
| Type: |  Handley Page Halifax Mk II |
| Owner/operator: | 78 Sqn RAF |
| Registration: | W1067 |
| MSN: | EY-? |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 3 / Occupants: 6 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | IJsselmeer SSW of Hindeloopen, Friesland -
 Netherlands
|
| Phase: | Combat |
| Nature: | Military |
| Departure airport: | RAF Middleton St. George, Durham |
Takeoff at 23:00 hrs for the third 1000 bomber raid, this time the target being Bremen in Germany.
Outward-bound, the aircraft was shot down by night fighter pilot Unteroffizier Heinz Vinke of the 5./NJG 2.
Crew:
Pilot:102567 Fg Off John Arthur Whittingham - Hemelumer Oldefred (Koudum) General Cemetery Plot A. Row 1. Grave 18.
Navigator:112497 Plt Off G Gibson PoW Camp L3. PoW Number 285
Wireless Operator:1304324 Sgt D B Donaldson PoW Camps L3/L6/357. PoW Number 316.
Flight Engineer:568948 Sgt A G Springthorpe PoW Camps L3/L6/357. PoW Number 361.
Air Gunner:614115 Sgt R A Brown - PoW Camps L3/L6/L4/357. PoW Number 311/Runnymede Memorial Panel 269 (Died 22 April 1945; his grave has been lost ever since !) Possible killed during a Mosquito attack.
Air Gunner:1107042 Sgt Harold Dronfield - Runnymede Memorial Panel 82
Although Sergeant Donaldson RAFVR has no known grave it is probable that his body was recovered and subsequently lost as the UK National Archives has a German POW card in his name (WO 416/103/65).
These cards were used not just to record captured prisoners but occasionally dead airmen recovered by the German authorities.
The original casualty file (AIR 81/15252) is also in the care of the Archives at Kew and available to view, together with the German Prisoner of War record cards for Gibson WO 416/137/205), Brown (WO 416/49/484), Springthorpe (WO 416/340/351) and Donaldson (WO 416/99/308).
It should be noted that these record cards contain basic information such as date of birth, service number, POW number etc on hand-written index cards, the salient points of which can usually be gathered by searching the UK National Archives catalogue online.
According to information in the above-referenced casualty file provided by fellow POW Warrant Officer Frederick Anderson, RAF (RAF number 1386170) in an interview on 25 June 1945, Sergeant Brown was one of a party of prisoners of war being marched from Stalag IIB eastwards in April 1945.
Anderson had been friends with Brown since before started and knew him well, the two families living near each other.
A night rest-stop was made on 21April when the column was around 16 miles from Wittenberge and the prisoners bedded down in two barns screened by trees just off a road. Hidden under the trees was a German motor transport column.
At about 1am the next morming an aircraft (identified by an American POW in the same column as a 'Mosquito' attacked the two barns and either a bomb or rocket before returning and machine gunning the other barn. At least one prisoner (Warrant Officer H Durnan) was killed outright.
Initially it was thought that Brown had also been killed but Anderson was told that his friend had been was injured in the neck and was being sent to Wittenberge for treatment.
Presumably Brown died of his injuries enroute or at the hospital and was buried at or near Wittenberge.
The general details of the attack and its immediate aftermath were also given by another prisoner on the match, Warrant Officer G Goodwin RAF.
Another prisoner puts the number of injured at around 20 and they were all taken to a hospital in Hagenow.
Enquiries were made in the immediate post-war period by the RAF's own Missing Research and Enquiry Unit (MREU) and continued right up till late 1949 when it was deemed that the Soviet authorities (who controlled the area around Wittenberge) would not allow further searches by MREU.
A decision to place his name on the Air Forces Memorial to the Missing was made in October 1949.
Despite statements in a letter whie a POW and at a later interview by Pilot Officer Gibson concerning the fate of Pilot Officer Whittingham (who was found with an unopened parachute some distance from the wreckage of the aircraft, having helped Sergeant Brown who had trapped his foot as he tried to flee the burning aircraft) and that of Sergeant Dronfield (who Gibson believes was killed during an initial attack on the British aircraft), the fate of Dronfield's body remained uncertain.
The file contains an undated extract copied from an International Red Cross Society letter (probably sent between mid 1944 and the end of the war).stating that the burial details relating to him 'were lost in an air raid', presumably over Germany or Occupied Holland.
However a MREU letter dated 15 July 1947 it is suggested that his body rests in the IJsselmeer in the central Netherlands.
German POW Index cards (marked 'Dead') are also included in the file.
Sources:
http://verliesregister.studiegroepluchtoorlog.nl/item2.php?SGLO=T1632
CWGC
Nachtjagd Combat Archive The Early Years part three
Google Maps
UK National Archives 'Discovery' catalogue search.
History of this aircraft
Other occurrences involving this aircraft
| 2 June 1942 | W7698 | 78 Sqn RAF | 3 | near Genneper Weg 2, Reichswald at Kranenburg, Nordrhein-Westfalen |  |
w/o |
| 27 July 1942 | W1184 | 78 Sqn RAF | 7 | North Sea |  |
mis |
| 6 August 1942 | W1180 | 78 Sqn RAF | 3 | Sint Odiliënberg - Posterholt; Limburg | |
w/o |
| 12 August 1942 | W1115 | 78 Sqn RAF | 2 | Igstadt, Wiesbaden, Hessen | |
w/o |
| 12 August 1942 | W1061 | 78 Sqn RAF | 2 | Wommelgem, Antwerp |  |
w/o |
| 29 August 1942 | W7809 | 78 Sqn RAF | 7 | Abstract, Overijse, Flemish Brabant | |
w/o |
| 10 September 1942 | DT491 | 78 Sqn RAF | 7 | near Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen | |
w/o |
| 24 September 1942 | R9447 | 78 Sqn RAF | 7 | North Sea N of Terschelling, Friesland | |
mis |
| 26 September 1942 | W7822 | 78 Sqn RAF | 8 | Wadden Sea 1.5 km E of Hörnum, Schleswig-Holstein | |
w/o |
| 1 October 1942 | W1036 | 78 Sqn RAF | 4 | Sehestedt, Schleswig-Holstein | |
w/o |
| 2 October 1942 | W1275 | 78 Sqn RAF | 6 | north of Herongen, Straelen, Nordrhein-Westfalen | |
w/o |
| 25 June 1943 | JB962 | 78 Sqn RAF | 7 | 1 km northwest of Zons, Dormagen, Nordrhein-Westfalen | |
w/o |
| 28 May 1944 | LW519 | 78 Sqn RAF | 1 | RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, England |  |
w/o |
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 17-Dec-2008 11:45 | ASN archive | Added |
| 28-Jun-2017 12:12 | TigerTimon | Updated [Time, Aircraft type, Operator, Total fatalities, Total occupants, Other fatalities, Location, Phase, Departure airport, Destination airport, Source, Narrative] |
| 26-Jan-2018 14:02 | Red Dragon | Updated [Operator, Location, Source, Narrative] |
| 26-Jan-2018 17:05 | Red Dragon | Updated [Narrative] |
| 30-Jan-2018 17:27 | Anon. | Updated [Narrative] |
| 11-Nov-2018 13:59 | Nepa | Updated [Operator, Departure airport, Destination airport, Operator] |
| 02-May-2020 16:53 | TigerTimon | Updated [Cn, Other fatalities, Location, Source, Narrative] |
| 15-Jun-2022 19:32 | Ron Averes | Updated [Location] |
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