Handley Page Hampden ?

[andy bird]

61 Sqn 23-24 May 1940

Rail Targets

L4146

61 Sqn "QR - P"

Force land in Germany out of Fuel

F/Sgt T G Ross
Sgt J W Wootton
Cpl L Walker
Sgt E R Corrigan+ (died whilst in captivity)

All POW

Landed out of fuel in a grass covered clearing in the Black Forest.
It was noted that this Hampden did not have the modifications to the Perspex of the navigators position.

Due to a faulty gyro-compass the crew of L4146 landed in a grey light of dawn on a patch of clear ground in an otherwise wooded area. The crew were so certain that they had landed in Scotland that the pilot sent the navigator to the nearby village to telephone the nearest RAF aerodrome to arrange transport to come and pick them up. The grim realisation that they had come down in Germany, in the Black Forest region between Horb and Rottweil, arrived too late for them to do much about it: even if the pilot thought that taking-off was a 'jolly good' idea, the wheels of the Hampden had all ready sunk into the soft ground thereby making it impossible to shift the bomber.

They had no alternative but to try and prevent its capture.

WoP Len Walker: "believed that the aircraft was on fire when the crew left it, as the pilot had fired the Verey cartridges into the fuselage to destroy the aircraft. All that seem's to have happened was that it created an impressive amount of smoke without causing any damage at all!"

"The observer/lower gunner Corrigan, contracted peritonitis whilst a prisoner of war and died in hospital, in spite of the concerted efforts of the German hospital staff to save this young life."

Andy Bird