Lancaster at War 3, mystery crew page 62

I hope that neither the publishers, nor the authors Mike Garbett and Brian Goulding will object to me reproducing a photo from their wonderful collection 'Lancaster at War 3'. Page 62 has two photographs – one depicting Guy Gibson's most famous dog, the other – an unknown crew from RAF Kelstern with their puppy mascot.

I have it on very good authority that the 625 Squadron crew is that of W/O Ron Lake. Geoff Yates, B/A in Jim Ives's, and for the rest of his first tour, Donald Blackmore's crew shared a hut with them. Geoff struck up a rapport with Lake's B/A 'Harpo' Greene and flew in his stead on a couple of occasions.

Ex P/O Yates (then a F/Sgt) remembered Ron Lake as a steady, cool headed pilot. W/O Lake went on to complete his tour of operations at Kelstern and survived the war.

Unfortunately I never pinned down who was who in the photo and sadly Geoff is no longer with us to identify them.

Lake's regular crew form his early days on the squadron seems to have been:-

Sgt R C Lake

Sgt L V Huntingdon (f/e)

Sgt H Greene (b/a)

F/Sgt W H Maver (nav)

Sgt W W Mills (w/op, a/g)

Sgt J Ramsay (a/g)

Sgt A R Masters (a/g)

Presumably one of them was behind the camera. Is there a glimpse of a crown above the figure on the left's chevron's, if so, and taking into account his dress, could this be navigator F/Sgt Maver? W/O Lake is next to him.

A/W/O Ronald Charles Lake was elevated to P/O status wef 5^th March 1944, the award of his DFC was gazetted on 19^th September 1944.

 

Unfortunately nothing is known about the dog.

'The noblest gift a hero leaves his race, is to have been a hero'.

I alluded last time to the loss of 95 aircraft on the 30^th/31^st March Nuremberg operation. Among the casualties were Sgt William Allan RAAF and P/O Cyril Barton. 

Sgt Allan, as you will be aware, had been one of Jim Ives's crew at 625 Squadron and was posted to 166 Squadron when the crew was split up. William Allan died when 166 Squadron Lancaster ME624, piloted by F/Sgt Roy Fennell, was attacked by a night-fighter and exploded on Giessen Airfield. One member of the crew, F/Sgt W Kiegwin, was able to bale out of the stricken aircraft, his six crew-mates F/Sgt R Fennell, Sgt W Pettis, F/Sgt J Smyth, F/Sgt D Harvey RAAF, F/Sgt A Jones and Sgt W Allan RAAF died.

P/O Barton had crossed the Atlantic on HMT Pasteur as a pilot u/t of class 42G, the same course as Jimmy Ives. Barton was apparently held back during his US training due to sickness and graduated as a member of class 42J.

P/O Cy Barton was yet another example of a young pilot who stayed at his post to the very last. Having been shot-up by night-fighters while seventy or so miles short of Nuremberg, with the intercom system u/s, fuel tanks and one engine of Halifax LK797 damaged, rendering the turrets out of action, a misinterpreted order led the b/a, nav and w/op to bale out. Barton pressed on and delivered his bomb-load and made for home, navigating as best he could by a chart strapped to his leg.

Having negotiated strong headwinds on the return flight the young pilot was nearing exhaustion. The aircraft crossed the English coast 90 miles north of where it should have with its fuel tanks all but empty. 

 

Flying at low level the two port engines ran out of fuel and stopped, too low to parachute out the remaining crew members took up crash positions and Cy Barton, flying on one engine attempted to find a suitable piece of ground for a crash landing. P/O Barton put the aircraft down, narrowly missing a row of miners' cottages and the pit-head at Ryhope Colliery, Tyne and Wear, clipping one cottage and crashing into the hillside. Cyril Barton was still alive when he was pulled from the wreckage, but died shortly after arriving at nearby Cherry Knowle Hospital. His three remaining crew-mates f/eng Sgt M E Trousdale, and a/gs Sgts H C H D Wood and F Bryce were injured, but survived. Sadly, George Heads a miner on his way to work was killed when the Halifax's tail assembly struck him.

For his gallantry in pressing-on to bomb despite the damage incurred to his aircraft, returning to England, avoiding disastrous damage to Ryhope village and for saving the lives of his three crew-mates, P/O Cyril Joe Barton was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

Log-book corroboration

Jim Ives' last flying duty before his posting away from 625 Squadron in December 1943 was on a fighter affiliation exercise, sharing the pilot's duties with F/Sgt Reg Price RCAF (December 5^th, Lancaster DV364, 1hr.25mins, day). I recently ran across Mr Frank Sutton's flying log-book

 http://625squadron.weebly.com/log-book.html 

which neatly mirrors entries in F/Sgt Price's and cousin Jim's own log-books.

Of current interest too are Frank Sutton's notes concerning losses on the Nuremberg raid of 30^th/31^st March 1944 :- 'THIS TRIP WAS SHEER HELL – N/Fs ATTACKING IN STRENGTH' – LOST 96 A/C'.

Significant, don't you think, that our aircrews knew exactly how bad losses were.

 back:- Sgt Les Knowles, P/O Jack Conley RAAF, F/Sgt Harry Powter
 front:-  P/O Frank Sutton, P/O Reg Price RCAF, P/O Dudley Ball RAAF, absent F/Sgt Jim Harris

many thanks anonymous emailer

Many thanks, sincerely, to the emailer who sent the information about ND360 and crew, especially for the photo of Jimmie Ives's inscription on the Runnymede Memorial, tablet 214.

Your email also serves to flag-up a fact recently pointed out to me by 'web-man the boy genius' – that cousin Jim does not have his own dedicated page on the website. This will be remedied on the revised website (which is coming very soon). However – Jim's story and those of his crew-mates are detailed in 'Does Life Hold Any More in Store?' - of which copies are still available (this website is really an adjunct to the book). Please don't be put-off by Pay-pal - it is an easy and secure system, but if you want to pay by other means send me an email via the 'contact' page.

Four crew members of ND360 were commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial because their remains could not be identified.  As Lilian recounted to me - Jim's crowning glory was his bright auburn, wavy hair.

Exhumation reports identified remains interred in Plot 1, Row 6, Grave 14 of the cemetery at Doberitz-Elsgrund:-

2nd body in grave.
Description of body : Badly smashed, little remained.
Hair: Brown wavy hair.
Clothing:  None

Remarks:  Reinterred in British Cemetery HEERSTRASSE, BERLIN:
        Plot: 7  Row: F  Grave 15

After several years in the ground would auburn hair appear brown?  This is my best guess at Jimmie Ives's resting place.  An unknown Airman.

'The best had gone and left only me'.

Flying Officer Douglas Chapman Dunn RAAF, known to his crew as 'Billy', celebrated his 22^nd birthday in the middle of August 1943. After the war his bomb-aimer W/O Marshall Smith paid tribute to his skipper in a letter to Dunn's family which outlined what happened to Lancaster ED949 on the late evening of 30^th January 1944.

Despite a fault which had rendered the rear-turret u/s F/O Dunn and crew pressed on with their sortie against the 'Big City'.

ED949 was attacked by a night-fighter about ten minutes short of Berlin, setting fire to the starboard wing and the bomb-bay. Bale-out had been ordered and when F/Sgt Smith exited the aircraft the Lancaster was in a shallow dive and conditions inside did not seem critical. However, local residents witnessed the blazing aircraft dive into the ground and explode on impact at Neuruppin Aerodrome.

F/Sgt Smith was captured and taken to the aerodrome and was 'profoundly shocked' to be informed that rear gunner 'Ned' Gloster was critically ill and not likely to survive and the rest of his crew-mates were dead.  The officials refused permission for Marshall Smith to see Gloster, who subsequently died.

F/O Douglas Chapman Dunn, RAAF 22yrs

Sgt. Frederick Adams 23yrs

F/O Frederick George Fidler 21yrs

Sgt. Andrew Leslie McConnell 23yrs

Sgt. Harry Deakin

and

F/Sgt. Edward Fitzgibbon Gloster, RAAF 20yrs 

were buried in a communal grave in Neuruppin cemetery with full military honours, a local evangelical parson officiated.

'It was an awful feeling to be the only one left and I often felt that I should have gone down with the rest, for the best had gone and left only me' – the heart rending words of the sole survivor from ED949 - W/O Marshall Smith – a Scotsman from South College Street, Elgin, Morayshire.

A thread appeared on a WW2 discussion forum in 2012 regarding this crew which prompted a contact from Paul Francis, nephew of navigator F/O Frederick Fidler. If Paul happens upon this piece, I would welcome anything he can tell about his uncle or the crew.

Herbert Cutler's camera

I hope Rod Collins won't mind me mentioning a thread from his fascinating website which is pertinent to these pages. I refer to the story of a camera given to Herbert Cutler – Officers' Mess barman at RAF Waltham as told by his grand-daughter Carol Blaylock. A young pilot handed his camera to Herbert for safe-keeping with the proviso that if he failed to return, the barman held onto the camera.

Sadly the young pilot did not come back and the camera has since been in Herbert's family for the best part of seventy years.

During my research I learnt that a nephew of 100 Squadron pilot P/O John 'Athel' Crabtree recalled that his mother (Athel's sister) had maintained that her brother had left his camera with someone for safe-keeping before flying on his final sortie – Berlin on the evening of 30^th January 1944.

Are these two separate stories? - or one - viewed from two sides?

W/O Crabtree's commission to Pilot Officer had been effective from 27^th January 1944, giving a very small window of opportunity to visit the Officers' Mess to toast his new status. Athel Crabtree had flown ND398 HW-B on the Berlin raids of 27^th/28^th and 28^th/29^th January, returning from the latter around breakfast time on Saturday morning (29th). With a stand-down declared for that evening it is likely that P/O Crabtree visited the mess that day.

If the camera had belonged to a 'regular customer', Herbert would possibly have recalled the pilot's name, however he was remembered just as a young pilot.

Did newly commissioned Athel Crabtree leave his camera with friendly mess steward Herbert Cutler before taking off from RAF Waltham for the last time?

John Athelstan Crabtree

Canadian Lancaster’s forthcoming visit to U.K.

Just drawing your attention to the proposed visit to these shores of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum's Lancaster this coming August, to fly alongside the BBMF's Lanc.

Canada's considerable contribution to the Allied war effort is so often overlooked - as is that of Bomber Command, of course.

Two birds with one stone, as they say!

(photo given to me by the late J Douglas Hudson DFC, nav. 100 Squadron,

a truly inspirational gentleman)

http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Family-friends-celebrate-life-war-hero-Douglas/story-20113454-detail/story.html