Looking for crash photos of 12 SQ Fairey Battles from 12.05.40-Garland PHoK P2204 & McIntosh PHoN L5439

[Larry Hickey]

Pieter,

Indeed this does show PHoJ. L5227, of Sgt. Marland. Several photos of that one have surfaced, including recently.

Luc Vervoort has established contact with the local historical society at Lanaken, Belgium, and has learned that many German soldiers visited the Garland wreck site and took pictures. I think that we probably already have some of these images in the EoE British Photo DB, which contains over 1400 images of the Fairey Battle, mostly from the WC/FC period. We have a large majority of them identified and associated with known crashes, but still many are not, and some could well be the Garland or the McIntosh crashes, which we're seeking. We just don't know that we have them.

We have learned that although the Garland crew was initially buried locally at Lanaken, the crash actually was at a place called Pietersem which was about 3 km NW of Lanaken. Today, that appears to be just a suburb of Lanaken.

Anyway Luc is still pursuing this at the local level in Belgium, and we're looking for any photos we might have that are captioned at Lanaken or Pietersem. We must be careful with that, however, as there was a Blenheim that crashed at Lanaken on the same day, again, for which we have no known photos. We don't want to confuse the wreckage of the two different aircraft.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

[Pieter H]

Hi Larry,
Glad you confirm. For me this was the first picture of the PH-J crash.
Pieter

Sorry for joining in late. Garland's Battle actually crashed into the bridge and was jammed in the side of it. In previous years I have seen a photograph of it in a book that I can't now remember, but you could see the tail of the Battle sticking out. Also inthe following days, my father, who had been seriously injured fighting with the 8th Warwickshire Regt. In the rearguard actions on the Comines Canal at Antoing, was taken over this bridge on the back of a German army lorry on his way into captivity. He saw thie Battle wedged into the bridge and told me about it when I was a kid. He told me that it was Garland's plane and it had made a huge impression on him, as it did me because I have never forgotten it. There clearly are photos of this, I don't know if you have had any success yet, but although I can't remember where I saw the photo, it was very stark and remains in my memory.