Help with tombs of unknown airmen in Netherlands may be my grandfather

Well for over 60 years nobody new what happened to my grandfathers plane exactly but doing some research i have now found the German account of the flakships that shot them down and news that three bodies washed up on 5th September in the area where they where shot down. (Schouwen Island)
These where buried temporarily at Haamstede cemetery.
These where later moved to the permanent locations of Flushing (Vlissingen) and Bergen op Zoom cemetery.
My Grandfather Sgt William Bradley was killed 30/31 Aug 1944. They where flying LL343 Mrk V Halifax from 298 Squadron.
With my research i managed to track down the Grandson of the pilot of the flight who lives in Canada, and it would seem from the accounts found on
Google Translate
It was believed that two of the bodies where canadian, well on the crew the flight officer was Canadian, but there was also a NZAF officer on board,
The account of the German ships is that the bomber by the looks of it attempted to attack them at low level but was shot down by one of there gunners.
There original mission was to drop SOE in Welsheran.
but it seems they may have encountered the 20th Flotilla and decided to take a run on them.
I would be grateful of any information regarding the unknown airmens tombs in these two locations i have looked on the cwcg website but it has yielded nothing.
Many thanks

 

Hello and welcome to the forum.


The following, related to the above loss is taken from 'Thought Without Anger' - Cummings



30 August 1944

Halifax V LL343
298 Sqn
51 degrees 46 North/05 degrees 34 East

The crew was tasked to drop supplies to partisans near Diest at position 51 degrees 03 North/05 degrees 34 East. However, the mission was not accomplished and it seems probable that this was the aircraft seen by another crew to be shot-down in the position reported above.

Casualties.

Flying Officer William Wallace BROWN 30 RCAF Pilot
CWGC :: Casualty Details

Flying Officer Robert Denver MACDUFF 26 RNZAF Navigator
CWGC :: Casualty Details

Flying Officer Francis SAYLES 22 DFM Bomb Aimer
CWGC :: Casualty Details

Flight Sergeant Frederick PEARSON 21 Wireless Operator
CWGC :: Casualty Details

Sergeant William BRADLEY 33 Flight Engineer
CWGC :: Casualty Details

Flight Sergeant John Bonsall SMITH 33 Air Gunner
CWGC :: Casualty Details

 

Eddieitman.

Sometimes the only way you find any unknown casualties is by walking around the cemetery in person. They sometimes state on CWGC that there are unknown buried in a particular cemetery, but not always.

I would recommend you e-mail CWGC at casualtyenq@cwgc.org and ask them to check their records for the 2 places you mentioned. As they will have put a headstone up, they should have a record of it.

If you are told that it is Bergen-Op-Zoon, I'm going there in September and am happy to look around. There are a lot of airman buried in both the British and the adjacent Canadian Cemetery.

Regards - Rob

 

Eddieitman.

Sometimes the only way you find any unknown casualties is by walking around the cemetery in person. They sometimes state on CWGC that there are unknown buried in a particular cemetery, but not always.

I would recommend you e-mail CWGC at casualtyenq@cwgc.org and ask them to check their records for the 2 places you mentioned. As they will have put a headstone up, they should have a record of it.

If you are told that it is Bergen-Op-Zoon, I'm going there in September and am happy to look around. There are a lot of airman buried in both the British and the adjacent Canadian Cemetery.

Regards - Rob

Ramacal that would be great, I will drop the cwgc an email and see if i can get some more info on these unknown airmen that where burried.

 

Eddie

You will have to be very patient for a reply. They only have a very small team, but will get back to you in time.

Rob

 

Eddieitman,

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I see that you are getting on well with your enquiries and I wish you well in your research.

It looks like you are receiving great advice and help from Robert and I hope that the visit is a success.

Regards
Tom

 

Would that have been the complete crew? Dropping supplies to partisans might have needed a dispatcher, or maybe some agents to be dropped. I can't trace any other casualties that might be linked, but is there a record of what it was carrying?
If the bomb bays had supply containers, they wouldn't have done much damage to flak ships. Sounds as if they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time...

You have obviously tracked down the Wings to Victory website and other sources to discover when and where they were found. Perhaps there will be others who can remember more in time for your visit if you contact Wings to Victory and ask if they will seek any eyewitnesses or records relating to the crash.

Good luck in your quest, but be prepared that it may not have what you want. It would still be worth seeing how well our aircrew are respected and cared for.

 

The subtitle is deceptive. " in belgium " Should be "in Holland*".

Regards,

Marco

*or The Netherlands, or Nederland, or Pays-Bas, or....

 

Eddie

There are 25 Unknown graves in Flushing (Vlissingen), 116 in Bergen-op-Zoom and 31 are buried in the Canadian Cemetry next to it (Over 100 British are buried in the Canadian Cemetery). Does not say which branch of the Armed Forces any of them are.

Just to let you know, tha the Cemeteries are in the Netherlands and not Belgium as mentioned in the title of your post.

Cheers - Rob

 

Thanks kevin, I know that the official records say it was supplies drops but
The mission is labeled as Oscric 122.
From my findings there is a whole network of Spies that went under the superlative Osric and the numbers where of each one of the operatives.
The letter sent from the Goverment to my Grandmother says that the mission was of a secret nature and was not to be discussed.
I have all the flight log books and have managed to trace many of the missions and nearly all where for dropping spies.
I have been in contact with Wings to Victory and this is where the information regarding the three bodies locations came from.
I fully expect to be dissapointed and realize that there is a good chance that these are not there bodies.
But the most fun part has been tracking these down.
I was so excited to make contact with Brown's grandson i am also hoping to find other relatives of the remaining crew.
Thanks to everybody for the help so far

 

Amended title thank you for correcting me.

 

Rob many thanks for that information, would any of the unknown tombs have the dates of death on them as it would be easier to narrow them down to Aug to say Oct 1944

 

Have you contact the dutch military war grave unit at Soesterberg, maybe they can help you out

 

Eddie

More than likely not, as the example shown indicates.

 

Eddie

There are 25 Unknown graves in Flushing (Vlissingen), 116 in Bergen-op-Zoom and 31 are buried in the Canadian Cemetry next to it (Over 100 British are buried in the Canadian Cemetery). Does not say which branch of the Armed Forces any of them are.

Just to let you know, tha the Cemeteries are in the Netherlands and not Belgium as mentioned in the title of your post.

Cheers - Rob

Eddie, the unknown's in Flushing from WW2 are split 18 RAF 4 Navy and 2 Army



Photo's of which are here, some of which are dated, and do appear to be in clusters based upon the year.

1944
IMG_2447 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_2449 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_2450 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_2453 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_2472 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_2474 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_2476 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_2479 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
1943
IMG_2513 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
IMG_2514 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
1942
AN AIRMAN OF THE 1939 - 1945 WAR on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
1941
AN AIRMAN OF THE 1939 - 1945 WAR on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
AN AIRMAN OF THE 1939 - 1945 WAR on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
AN AIRMAN OF THE 1939 - 1945 WAR on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
AN AIRMAN OF THE 1939 - 1945 WAR on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
AN AIRMAN OF THE 1939 - 1945 WAR on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
AN AIRMAN OF THE 1939 - 1945 WAR on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
AN AIRMAN OF THE 1939 - 1945 WAR on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

There are also airmen buried from the 31st Aug 44, an example of is.

IMG_2454 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

RAMACAL, one RA Unknows as well

IMG_2536 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

Brilliant Phil

I see you got those from the Sanguinius set. I have not finished trawling through those yet, as he did not label a lot of them up. Saved someone a visit.

Cheers - Rob

 

Brilliant Phil

I see you got those from the Sanguinius set. I have not finished trawling through those yet, as he did not label a lot of them up. Saved someone a visit.

Cheers - Rob

Rob, Ive been through all 5,000 plus of them so tell me about it. I listed the cemeteries in the order that they are in the set, so now find a lot easier to go too a certain cemetery or churchyard. Those sets for the big cemeteries are all taken in order, so again, with the aid of a cemetery plan, you can go to a certain grave a lot easier.

P

 

Would that have been the complete crew? Dropping supplies to partisans might have needed a dispatcher, or maybe some agents to be dropped. I can't trace any other casualties that might be linked, but is there a record of what it was carrying?
If the bomb bays had supply containers, they wouldn't have done much damage to flak ships. Sounds as if they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time...

You have obviously tracked down the Wings to Victory website and other sources to discover when and where they were found. Perhaps there will be others who can remember more in time for your visit if you contact Wings to Victory and ask if they will seek any eyewitnesses or records relating to the crash.

Good luck in your quest, but be prepared that it may not have what you want. It would still be worth seeing how well our aircrew are respected and cared for.

Kevin

you will not find the agents as these would have been Dutch agents so will not be listed by CWGC

Chris

 

Just a poiint about the internment and indentification of casualties from a CWGC principle.

Unless a casualty can be positively identified,irrespective of circumstances,the CWGC wiill intere the casualty as "unknown".Surprisingly this principle is upheld in the case of an aircraft loss when a casualty cannot be identified but is otherwise known to be connected with other members of the crew who have been identified and are interred as named casualties.

For those lost at sea,unless their identity could be established,they were treated as unknowns if the sea gave them up.So in the case of Halifax LL343 T-L, it was believed to be been lost in the Channel to a flak ship off the Dutch coast.In the case of the crew,it has been proved that no one survived so that it may be that they were washed up on beaches from Northern France to Denmark depending on the tides.Quite a number of aircraft lost in these seas had their crews washed up around the Frisian Islands as "knowns" or "unknowns"

The other point is that casualties in enemy territory may have been interred as knowns but in the immediate years after the war when "concentration"burials took place,that identity was lost and the casualty was interred as an unknown when a remains transfer took place.I think I am right when I say that few RAF casualties in Germany lie in their original burial plots as opposed to France and the Netherlands where the majority were left in their original place of internment.

So unless a date of death appears on a CWGC tombstone,it is hard to ascertain the circumstances of death.Sometimes there is a clue insofar as if an aircraft loss has resulted in named casualties.In small cemeteries it is possible to deduce unknown graves as being connected to named casualties where deaths have occurred on the same date.However it cannot be proved, other than by DNA testing of unknown remains to prove a connection with relatives of those who were recorded as missing being on board.The procedure is very expensive and time consuming but has been used recently with the Great War "unknowns",recently in Northern France.

Getting back to the loss of the Halifax,I am late into this thread,but the term "partisans'' took my interest."Partisans" tended to be used to describe communist resistance groups and it would appear that this operation was connected with the Osric resistance group (not Oscric) in Belgium.These groups usually were only supplied arms from the Allies if they were willing to be brought into the overall coordination of resistance,rather than being "ad hoc" groups.

However, Osric was a very influencial resistance leader whose real name was Colonel Bastin and was considered to be the head of the Belgian Secret Army.He had been arrested by the Germans in the summer of 1944 and then released but was rearrested in October 1944 and like so many vanished into the "Nacht und Nebel" hell hole of Grosrosen Concentration Camp.I suspect he was a victim of the wholesale slaughter that took place here in early April 1945.(British authorites continued to code the head of the Belgium Secret Army as "Osric" after Bastin's arrest.)

Regarding Halifax LL343 T-L of No 298 Squadron,the aircraft was on an SOE operation out of Tarrant Rushton,Dorset to drop arms to the Osric resistance cell and took off at 2359 hrs.There was the normal crew of 6 on board which sometimes additionally carried a despatcher if agents were to be dropped.In this case it would appear that a despatcher was not detailed to be a member of the crew.

Per Ardua ad Astra

 

Eddie,
I'm new to this forum and the first thing I did was a search on Haamstede, the place I live, and found 3 records and one was related to your grandfather.
As a member of a foundation Wings to Victory we have a database operational with 600 plus crashes in the south-west part of Holland called Zeeland.
The LL343 is included in the database and is accessible.
http://www.wingstovictory.nl/database//index.phphe
The first screen shows a number of selection items; select zoeken (dutch for search) and enter.
Next screen enter LL343 and push enter and you will get the detail line.
Cursor to datum (date) and push enter and you will get details.
All pdf's have detail info.
As most of the info is in dutch and you need some english translation let me know.

Leo Bakker