The blue PRU Spitfire PR.XI shot down Nijmegen 20 Sept1944

[Stig Jarlevik]

Hewasahero

I have no access to the two aircrafts record cards, which is what I am quoting.
However there is no reason that everyone so far who has checked them can all read them so wrong.

Likewise since you state you quote the ORB we end up in a deadlock which I cannot solve unless we can find a third source.

I will have a word with someone who might be able to help.

Cheers
Stig

[hewasahero]

Stig,

Here are screenshots of the digitised microfilm of the 16 Sqdn ORBs covering the period of this incident, which is what the National Archives at Kew lets you take for free, and should be a reasonable (if fuzzier) facsimile of the original typed documents. I don't reasonably foresee getting access to those. Note the fault with the typewriter where the upper and lower case letters are misaligned with respect to one another. Next we need access to reasonable facsimiles of the two aircrafts' Record Cards for comparison. Are those cards in London? If so, let me know where, as I'm local. Also we need any other (ideally original or good facsimile) documentation which can potentially be used to corroborate one or other document set (or maybe even point out where the discrepancy has crept in):







Cheers
hewasahero

[Stig Jarlevik]

Very puzzling

On one page the ORB states for 20.9.1944
A completely duff day, only one sortie was flown, and so on, and so on.
No losses are mentioned!

On the other page you show at least four missions on the 20th with the two losses listed.

Are you sure the pages are from the same ORB?
If they are the ORB seems totally unreliable to me....

Finally, I have no idea if the RAF aircraft record cards are at Kew or not. I have always supposed they are, but you have to ask someone who knows.

Cheers
Stig

PS: I now see that for some odd reason one part of the ORB list the four sorties to have taken place on the 21st while the other record them on the 20th. Again not very trustworthy....
Also why this 'double book keeping'??

[hewasahero]

They are from the same ORB.

The detachment to, and mission from, RAF Northolt was a 2TAF secret at the time (being in support of Operation Market Garden), and the 'double' aspect derives from this alone. One of the reports is from Northolt, and the other from Amiens Glisy. Are you reading 'PL896' too? My eyesight's not 20/20…

Jimmy Taylor's book 'One Flight Too Many'…

http://www.ypdbooks.com/biography/62...-YPD00583.html

(a great read despite a few factual errors) and other pamphlets of his, talk about the Northolt detachment and also of having to gather his bunkmate Brodby's things together when it was clear he was not coming back.

Can you suggest what source material would likely be more authoritative than the Squadron ORBs? On occasion these are pretty much contemporaneous notes, with other entries only hours old…

The CWGC entry further reinforces 20Sept1944 as the date of his crash…

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/ca...0JOHN%20ROBERT

Yet to hunt the cards myself. Need to find out whether they're at RAF Museum London.

We may have a third party in the form of the Studiegroep Luchtoorlog 1939-1945. Here you can download their 1944 Loss Register PDF…

http://www.studiegroepluchtoorlog.nl...register-1944/

Here's their entry for Brodby…

T4204 | 20-sep-44 | 1000 | Hees (Dorpsstraat 158/160) | Spitfire PR.XI | PA893 | 16 Sqdn | F/O. J.R. Brodby B

Can they prove any of this, and if so what sources are they quoting?

There are other websites with similar entries. Again, where are they getting this?

I'm looking for a fruitful collaboration here. The ball's on your side of the net!

Anyone else can muck in too if they've a mind to…

Med vänliga hälsningar
hewasahero
http://hewasahero.wordpress.com/

[hewasahero]

Hello again!
I've managed to get scans of the Movement Record Cards for PL896 and PA893 from the RAF Museum London…

http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/

They're on my blog…

http://hewasahero.wordpress.com/

…and here we see the dilemma crystallised. Planes with both these serial numbers didn't crash on 20 September 1944, so there's an error in one or other set of record copies (and almost certainly in the original records). At first glance, the number of entries on the Movement Cards gives weight to their being the more trustworthy source, but if they are correct, then where did 'PL896' come from in the Operations Record Books? It doesn't look like a mis-spelling of 'PA893', and just happens to be the serial number not just of a Spitfire, but of a Spitfire of the same model!

Who can unpick this Gordian knot?

[hewasahero]

We're in the press for Nijmegen's province, Gelderland !

http://hewasahero.wordpress.com/

[hewasahero]

We're in the 6 September edition of 'De Gelderlander', the paper for the Nijmegen area. The original article and an imperfect English translation are both here on my blog…

http://hewasahero.wordpress.com/

and for more details of the ceremony please see the organiser's site…

http://www.litho320.veteranen.nl/

[hewasahero]

There's news out of the archives for Wijchen Municipality…

http://hewasahero.wordpress.com/

[hewasahero]

The unidentified airman in Wijchen got identified pretty quickly as someone else, by a man who specialises in this area. Possible that Wijchen is 'leading us down the garden path', but still we battle on…!

http://hewasahero.wordpress.com/2014...an-identified/

[hewasahero]

Investigation spurred by PL896's Movement Card leads to this serial number being very unlikely for the plane that Brodby crashed in…

http://hewasahero.wordpress.com/