German War Graves in Ireland

[Tony Kearns]

Jim P.
Perhaps it does sound a bit ghoulish but in the case of my early research into landings in my country (Ireland) which was "neutral" it was not possible to gain access to militay records here for many, many years and only fairly recently were documents released. Censorship during the war was severe, imposed more stictly than even our neighbour the UK. Newspapers merely reported that a German or British aircraft had crashed and the crew were buried in a named place. It was necessary to locate the graveyard and note the names. It was in this manner that information was collected and then with the arrival of experts (such as on this forum) who produced literary works on the subjects that it was possible to put together the identities of the aircraft etc. When Irish documents were eventually made accessible, they naturally did not have information on the units involved.
Regards
Tony Kearns