Lancaster OW-R

On the night of 22/23 March 1944, RAF Bomber Command sent approximately 6324 airmen into action for its second large raid on Frankfurt. 816 aircraft took part: 12 Mosquito pathfinders, 180 Halifaxes, and 720 Lancasters. A total of 180 men were killed, 56 taken prisoner, and 33 aircraft were lost. The raid was a success, leaving the old centre Frankfurt destroyed and killing over 1000 civilians. The fires were visible over 100km away.

Frankfurt Damage

One of those taken prisoner was my great uncle, F/O William Burrows. He served in the RCAF with 426 squadron as a radio operator, flying from Linton-on-Ouse. This raid was his fifth, and final, operation.

His Lancaster B ii, OW-R (sister to OW-Q above), was intercepted and shot down during the raid. He was badly wounded in the attack, only he and one other member of the crew escaped their burning aircraft. He recovered in a German hospital before being sent to a POW camp, from which he was liberated by Americans at the end of the war. My uncle never spoke about his wartime experiences, and we respected him too much to dare ask. He passed away several years ago, and while we will never know the details of his experiences, we can piece together some of the events of that night.

According to Lufwaffe claims, OW-R was intercepted on her outbound leg, at 20,000 feet over Biefield, Germany and crashing near Greffen. The night-fighter was a Ju-88 G6 piloted by Helmut Lent. He shot down a second aircraft that night, making OW-R his 90th or 91th victory. He went on to accumulate a total of 110 victories before being killed in an accident in the fall of the same year.

Junkers Ju-88 G6 Nightfighter

Being a top-scoring Experten, Lent was an obvious choice to appear in propaganda films.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUyw_E1wkA8

The footage of burning aircraft are real, the rest appears to be an idealization meant to reassure, as if the nightmare could be stopped.

If anyone is interested in researching Bomber Command operations, a searchable archive of Flight magazine is available. The endless Casualty Communiqués are a sobering read. The exact number of German civilians killed in the offensive can never be known. The map below (I forget the source) shows the route the raid took and known combats.

Raid Map (PDF)

A resource I came across recently is a collection of “loss cards“, the records kept by the RAF of missing aircraft. Each card lists the aircraft, bombload, target, take-off time, and the fate of the crew. Some of this data was encoded by notches on the periphery of the cards so they could be processed by a card sorter. Information about casualties was not encoded, perhaps an insight to the workings of the military mind.

Loss Card for LL647 (front)

There is a space on the cards called, “Special Equipment”, where navigation aids and defensive electronic gear could be detailed. They are listed by codename:  Window was chaff, Monica was a rearward-facing warning radar, and Fishpond was and extension of H2S facing downwards. OW-R appears to have been fitted with Monica, but Lent’s Ju-88 may have been armed with Schräge Musik, two upward firing 20 or 30mm cannons. The attack could therefore be made from below, out of view of the crew and their warning equipment.

Loss Card for LL647 (rear)

As far as I can tell, the narrative reads as follows: On way to objective, a/c attacked by N/F at about 20000′ over the Ruhr. [illegible] W/OP was blown out and landed by parachute. [illegible] killed except BA.

The crew of OW-R that night was:

• F/O W. J. Burrows, Wireless Operator
• F/S H.H. Gray, Navigator
• F/O H. F. MacDonald, Bomb Aimer
• Sgt. J. W. LacLean, Rear Gunner
• Sgt. L. Pearson, Flight Engineer
• F/O E.K. Sears, Mid-upper Gunner
• F/S H.G. Wright, Pilot

[Update 27/2/14] The excellent site, Air Crew Remembered, has put up a page about OW-R. They credit the interception to Rudolf Frank, credited with 47 victories before being killed a few months later. I assume this version is correct because the authors know a lot more than I do about the subject.