Quote:
Originally Posted by Coquet
Without having to trawl back though other records does anyone recall the bombers' mission and why they ended up at a fighter base in the north east?
My now worthless memory says the mission was sowing sea mines off the coast of the Netherlands ? correct?
|
19 Stirlings and 12 Halifax’s had been detailed to “sow” their mines off Denmark and the Frisian Islands. On this particular night, Warrant Officer Kerr and his crew where detailed to drop off the Danish coast in Stirling EH880.
Stirling EH880 was one of a batch produced by the Austin Motor Company, Birmingham, to contract B982939/39, and was initially delivered to 75 (New Zealand) Squadron on the 17th May 1943. The Squadron had been operational with the type from November 1942 when Stirlings replaced the Wellingtons it had been flying since April 1940. It would appear, from the movement card, that EH880 suffered some damage in the June, however it was returned to the Squadron on the 24th July, and on the 30th of July it took part on the large Bomber Command raid on Hamburg. It continued to participate in bombing raids, including the large scale attack on the Peenemunde V-2 rocket testing site on the Baltic coast on the 17th/18th August, and on the 18th/19th of November it was one of 18 aircraft put up by the Squadron to attack Mannheim, in the last raid to involve over 100 Stirling’s.
Fog at their home base of RAF Mepal in Cambridgeshire caused the ill-fated diversion to RAF Acklington