[Matheson]

Hi, I'm new on here although I have been on the RAFCommands site.

My wife and I were at the BOB memorial Service at Capel le Ferne last week representing the family of a former 222 sqn. BOB pilot who was killed on 24th August 1943 flying for 418 Squadron.

Following a suggestion from Brian Bines of this forum I have been looking into the question of whether this loss might have been due to friendly fire. I mentioned this during lunch with a BOB pilot, John and his family, who immediately piped up; "Dad'll tell you about that, wasn't there an incident in your Squadron." It seemed that there had been two such incidents in which his colleagues had been shot down by allied aircraft as a result of a lack of adequate communication between the Controllers at the various Beacons such that interceptors were sent out to positions determined by "Vectors". A statement made with some venom, even after all these years, so clearly the Squadron felt the loss of their airmen. This was in early 1943 so clearly the system at that time was still prone to errors.

The information I have had from Brian Bines, that followed an earlier thread on this forum concerning the ME410 losses on the night of 23/24-8-1943, together with the RAF combat logs which he also very kindly sent me , seemed to indicate that there was an 'extra' RAF claim that was not supported by Luftwaffe reports. This was not absolutely certain as the reports seem to be detailed differently and I wasn't sure if one Luftwaffe loss was being recorded as a 24th August claim by the RAF and a 23rd August loss by the Luftwaffe.

Nevertheless, only one Mosquito, which took off from Ford in Sussex at 02.28 on 24-8-1943, was lost by the RAF that night, and the German aircraft most likely to be confused with it was the ME410.

The timings, approximate locations and combat descriptions rule out all except one RAF reports as a possible cause for the loss of the Mosquito by friendly fire and that is the report by J Backhouse and G Goodman of 29 Squadron.

Whilst this is not conclusive, it provides a certain symmetry to the claims from either side, and I should be interested to hear if anybody else has investigated this claim in more detail.

From what I have learned, the weather over Northern France was fine but there could well have been thunderstorms over Central France.

Many thanks for any ideas about this,

Howard