The Long Road: Trials and Tribulations of Airmen Prisoners from Stalag Luft VII (Bankau) to Berlin , June 1944 - May 1945 by Oliver Clutton-Brock & Raymond Crompton
Author:Oliver Clutton-Brock & Raymond Crompton [Clutton-Brock, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grub Street Publishing
Published: 2014-03-18T22:00:00+00:00
The nightmare ended on 31 July when Davey and Wicks were sent to Dulag Luft. It took three days to get there and, after five days at the Luftwaffe’s interrogation centre and transit camp, another five days to get to Bankau. W/O Blattmann joined them on 22 August in Trupp 27.
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Lancaster LL846, PO-V ‘Victor’, 467 Squadron, was on its way back from Stuttgart on the night of 28/29 July 1944, when the navigator reported to the pilot, F/O S. Johns DFC, RAAF, that they were dead on track and would be over the French coast, near Cabourg, in half a minute. Barely had he spoken than V-Victor was hit by a burst of flak. The port outer engine was set alight, but the crew could do nothing to prevent the fire from spreading to the rest of the wing. Johns had no option but to order the crew to their ditching positions but, before they could get there, he had put down on the waters of the Baie de la Seine. The nineteen-year-old flight engineer, Sgt D.K.J. Phillips, suffered a severe head injury in the ditching and was unable to get into the dinghy. Despite Johns’ valiant efforts to pull him aboard, he drowned.
The rest of the crew, cast adrift in their rubber boat, lost the struggle against wind and tide to gain the shores of England, and were picked up by the enemy on 1 July after two days afloat. Three of the crew went to Luft 7 – F/S M.J. O’Leary RAAF in Trupp 23, and F/Sgt B.P. Molloy RAAF and Sgt B.R.J. Pring in Trupp 27 – while the three others of the crew, all officers, went to Stalag Luft III (Sagan). Most of them were on their twenty-ninth operation. So near, yet so far...
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Another Lancaster on the Stuttgart raid on 28/29 July 1944, NE164, 550 Squadron, was lost on the way out near Strasbourg in eastern France, shot down for his sixth victory by Oberleutnant Gottfried Hanneck, 5./NJG1. Though later wounded when shot down himself, Hanneck would survive the war, unlike NE164’s pilot, F/O Harry Jones, one of those gallant airmen who gave his life to save his crew. Perishing with him was the mid-upper gunner, who died ‘when the cord of his intercom tangled with his parachute cords and he was strangled’.
Also lost was the bomb aimer, Sgt F.H. Habgood. Having parachuted safely to earth, he was captured near the village of Niederhaslach, Alsace, and taken first to Schirmeck security camp then to Struthof-Natzweiler extermination camp, and executed. Two of those responsible for his death, brought to justice after the war, were hanged on 11 October 1946.
The navigator, F/O W. Dinney RCAF, after help from Ste Odile convent and the French Resistance, got back to England, but the rest of NE164’s crew were captured, and arrived at Luft 7 in Trupp 23 – Sgts J.R. Drury (flight engineer), Don Hunter (wireless operator), and R.B. Cumberlidge (rear gunner).
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12 AUGUST 1944. Very hot day. It was noted that the guards now had machine guns in their sentry boxes.
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