Blog Archive
If you wish to comment on a post from my archive please email me or post
Sunday, 6 April 2014
'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 30th/31st 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 Keigwin, 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.
Saturday, 15 March 2014
'The best had gone and left only me'.
Flying Officer Douglas Chapman Dunn RAAF, known to his crew as 'Billy', celebrated
his 22nd 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 30th 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.
John Proctor
Contact Me
