Monthly Archives: May 2018

Last time, I talked about a Lancaster from 61 Squadron, Serial Number EE176, Squadron Letters QR-M. They took off from RAF Coningsby to attack Nuremburg.

Absolutely the place to attack, the black, beating heart of Nazism:

On the way back, the Lancaster was struck by lightning and the pilot was blinded. He ordered the crew to bale out but only Len Darben and Harold Pronger, as we have seen, obeyed his order. They both perished and their sacrifice is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial:

The Grim Reaper was not happy with that kind of situation though. He is always very, very, greedy during times of war, so on June 25th 1944, he organised his best friend, Disaster, to help him seize the men who had not been killed by the lightning strike of March 29th 1944. Here they are:

Forrest. Kemish. Macfie. Newman. Wood.

Their days were numbered:

And so he put his plan into operation…….

On June 24th 1944, at 22:37, an Avro Lancaster III, serial number LM518 and squadron letters QR-C, took off from RAF Skellingthorpe to bomb V-1 flying bomb launching sites at Prouville, some 15 miles north of Abbeville in Normandy. They were attacked and shot down by a night fighter, and they crashed at Bienfay in the Somme Department. It would be nice to know who fired the bullet but there are just too many Lancasters and “4-mot. Flzg” on the list of Luftwaffe fighter victims to differentiate one from another, especially as most of them were shot down in Normandy:

The pilot, John Augustus Forrest, only 21 years old, was killed. He was the son of Matthew Augustus Campbell Forrest and Clarice Irene Preston Forrest. The family lived at Busselton in Western Australia. It has a beautiful beach and a wonderful pier to walk along:

Busselton is a city in the south west region of the state, some 140 miles south of Perth, with an estimated population of 36,285 in 2015. (Wow! Some wild guess!)

The navigator, James Rankin Stratton Wood, aged 34, was killed. He was the son of James and Jessie Wood and the nephew of Barbara G. Wood. They all came from Stonehaven in Kincardineshire in Scotland.

Edward James Kemish DFM was the wireless operator/air gunner. He was the son of Benjamin and Ellen Rose Kemish, of Enfield in Middlesex and was only 23 years of age when he was killed. On his grave his parents had inscribed:

“To the world he was just an airman, to us he was all the world. Dad and family”

Now working as a flight engineer rather than a bomb aimer, Donald Cecil Newman, aged only 22, was killed. He was the son of Cecil Newman and Kitty Newman from Bristol.

The man most probably working as a rear gunner was John Macfie. He was only 21 and he was killed. He was the son of Andrew B. Macfie and Frances Macfie, of Glasgow.

All four were buried in the Abbeville Communal Cemetery Extension along with 2098 other casualties from the two World Wars. Here is quite a famous picture from its early years back in 1919:

That very same night, a second Lancaster from 61 Squadron was lost. It was also a Mark III, serial number ND987 and squadron letters QR-B. Six of the crew were killed and we have already met one of them before in this blood soaked story. He was Sergeant Norman Harold Shergold, the Flight Engineer, who was buried in the London Cemetery and Extension at Longueval, eight miles east-north-east of Albert, a town made famous in another blood soaked story:

Let us not forget, though, in the same aircraft, the sacrifice of Pilot Officer J Kramer of the RCAF, Flight Sergeant RW Burkwood, Flight Sergeant CW Greenaway, Sergeant P Donohue and Sergeant RF Coleman. Sergeant AN Avery survived and he became an evader.

 

 

The last post finished on a bit of a cliffhanger.
A 61 Squadron Lancaster, serial number EE176, squadron letters QR-M, had taken off from RAF Coningsby to attack Nuremburg.

During the raid, more or less everything had gone wrong for the bomber force during the costliest raid of the war. Almost 100 bombers were destroyed and around 550 RAF aircrew were killed.

When EE176 was just short of the coast of Suffolk, England on the way back, the aircraft was struck by lightning:

The pilot was blinded and the whole crew were stunned. As the aircraft plunged earthwards, thinking that they were over land, the pilot ordered his crew to bale out. Just a thousand feet from catastrophe, though, just a thousand feet from what would prove for two crew members to be a cold and watery grave, he suddenly regained some of his eyesight.  It was enough for him to stabilise the aircraft and to fly it straight and level. He turned to ask the crew if they were all OK……

Unfortunately, Harold Pronger and Leonard George Darben, the wireless operator / air gunner, thinking that it was the right thing to do, had both baled out, taking their Mae West flotation gear with them:

The rest of the crew, luckily for them, had all been too affected by the lightning strike to follow the pilot’s order. They were all, literally, stunned.

The bomber was now really quite close to the English coast, and Air Sea Rescue were immediately notified by radio about what had happened, and that there were two men in the sea who needed rescuing as soon as possible:

Despite extensive searching at first light the following day, the rescue boats failed to find the two missing men.

The water in the North Sea is too cold in late March to survive for very long and it was presumed that both men had perished. Research in 2008 showed that a body floating in the sea off Western Europe becomes a partial skeleton after a month and a complete skeleton after three months. Once the latter stage is reached, presumably the bones all disappear.

We already know the bare details of Harold Pronger’s life back in Australia, but not Len Darben. Poor Len was only 20 years old. He was the son of Joseph William Darben and Emily Darben of Walthamstow in Essex.

No cold and watery grave for the rest of the crew, though, the five men still in the aircraft. The pilot, Flying Officer John Augustus Forrest, also of the RAAF, managed to reach the English coast without difficulty and they all landed safely at RAF Little Snoring in north Norfolk at 0600 hours.

The crew of this Lancaster, EE176, was Flying Officer JA Forrest (pilot), Sergeant AH Davies, (flight engineer), Flight Sergeant JRS Wood, (navigator), Sergeant DC Newman, (bomb aimer), Sergeant LG Darben, (wireless operator/air gunner), Flight Sergeant HW Pronger, (air gunner) and Sergeant J Macfie, (air gunner).

I did not realise until long afterwards, though, that Lancaster, EE176, was a star among Lancasters, a Bette Davis or an Errol Flynn among bombers.

EE176 of 61 Squadron was in actual fact, “Mickey the Moocher”, a so-called “Ton-up Lanc” which carried out 119 missions. This section of the fuselage has been preserved:

These larger bits were probably not preserved:

In actual fact, 61 Squadron had another, second, “Ton-up Lanc”, JB138, the famous “Just Jane”, which carried out somewhere in the region of 120 missions. Here’s the original:

The Lancaster in the wonderful museum at East Kirkby is currently painted as this particular aircraft:

And subsequent research revealed others.

ED860 carried out 130 operations until it all came to an end on October 28th 1944 after a bombing raid on Bergen in Norway. Apparently, on its return, the Lancaster swung out of control on the runway and crashed. Nobody was injured. Shared with 156 Squadron, N-Nuts or N-Nan had flown almost 1032 hours before it was struck off charge on November 4th 1944 and subsequently scrapped:

LL843 or ‘Pod’ (=P=OD) was a 61 Squadron Lancaster which was also shared with 467 Squadron. It was scrapped by Messrs Cooley & Co on May 7th 1947 after carrying out 118 raids:

LM274 carried out 138 missions as QR-F for Freddie. This aircraft survived everything the Luftwaffe and the Third Reich could throw at it, but not the end of the war. It was scrapped and turned into ploughshares on April 18th 1946:

Around 35 Lancasters achieved 100 ‘ops’ or more. You can read about all of them in “Ton-up Lancs” a splendid book:

Last time, I talked about a Lancaster, Lancaster LM360, which apparently had a great number of mechanical problems, such that the pilot ordered the entire crew to bale out in an effort to save their lives. This they did, and they all had a jolly time making their way back to their base from Norfolk where the winds of Fate had carried them. Meanwhile, the pilot found that the plane was seemingly recovering from its funny turn and was able to carry on, such that Flying Officer Fitch was able to make a safe landing at RAF Winthorpe. Here it is today, with its fossilised runways:

One of the happy survivors this time was Harold William Pronger. He was a 33 year old married Australian from Bundaberg in Queensland and by March 29th 1944 he was still a member of 61 Squadron. In 2015, Bundaberg had a population of 70,588. It is on the River Burnett in southern Queensland and looks a lovely place to spend a summer, despite the recent floods which reached nearly 30 feet above normal. The town is nowadays famous for its rum, usually sold in special Australian sizes :

During the night of March 30th-31st 1944, Harold was again on board a 61 Squadron Lancaster, serial number EE176, squadron letters QR-M. They took off from RAF Coningsby to attack Nuremburg. This was an extremely long trip from Lincolnshire, some 700 miles at least.

The raid proved to be the biggest disaster in the history of Bomber Command. 795 bombers were sent to Nuremberg but there were very high winds to blow them off course, a clear sky without cloud cover, bright moonlight and perfect meteorological conditions for the formation of contrails:

In addition, the target was clouded over when they got there. All of these potentially disastrous problems had been revealed by a Mosquito meteorological reconnaissance flight just before the raid set off, but the top brass decided that it was best to keep calm, to ignore the evidence the Mosquito had brought back and carry on.

All of these meteorological circumstances helped the German night fighters enormously. They moved into the attack as soon as the bomber stream crossed the Belgian coast. Hardly any damage was done by the RAF to the target and a sizeable number of aircraft were more than 60 miles off course when they bombed Schweinfurt by mistake, immediately after it was target marked in error by two Mosquito pathfinders.

At one point, the bombers were losing one aircraft per minute for just under an hour. Almost 100 bombers were destroyed and around 550 RAF aircrew were killed. You would think it could not get any worse, but for Harold William Pronger, it did. On his way back, after experiencing severe sleet and hail near Hannover, suddenly, at around 0530 hours, just before they would have crossed the English coast, Lancaster EE176 met up with a huge and violent electrical storm:

The storm was too big to fly either over or around, so instead, they were obliged to plough straight through the snow, the sleet, the hail, and the torrential rain. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, the Lancaster was struck by lightning.

All of the crew were severely stunned. The pilot and some other members of the crew were temporarily blinded. For a short period, with effectively no pilot at the controls, the aircraft careered all over the sky. The pilot, still blind, ordered everybody to bale out, thinking that they had already crossed the English coast. The aircraft continued to plunge all over the sky, but its main direction was earthwards.

When the Lancaster reached just 1,000 feet above the cold raging waters of the North Sea, the pilot suddenly regained his eyesight. Not perfection, not 20/20 vision, but enough to take over control of the aircraft.
He then started to check that everybody was OK.  They weren’t.

The rest of the story, next time.