Five unknown airmen, 26.11.1943.

[Joe Potter]

These five airmen were originally buried in the cemetery at Oberlagen Concentration Camp, all have the same date of death, so presumably they crashed in that area, they are now buried at Reichwald Forest War Cemetery, any ideas on who they could be ?

[ian hunt]

Do you mean Oberlangen, or is that a different one?

Not that I have any answer for you but just checking we're all starting off in the correct direction.

Ian

[Joe Potter]

Oberlangen CC was north of Haren, close to the Dutch border

[RSwank]

On fold3 the AAF MACR section also includes monthly summaries of all allied crashes. For 26 November 1943 there is recorded the crash of a Lancaster at "Niederlangen West of Meppen". On Google maps there is a Niederlangen North of Meppen and directly adjacent to Oberlangen. "KU" number is 116600. Might be a possibility.

[Joe Potter]

Thanks for the info, we now need to ID this Lancaster, obviously.

[Alex Smart]

Perhaps DV297, five crew remembered on the Runnymede Memorial, 9ne crew (RCAF) at the Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery, and one crew (USAAF) remembered on the walls of the missing at the US Military Cemetery Margraten.

[Joe Potter]

Thanks Alex,
The first contender, I expect a few more, in time, I have a CWGC list of all other unknown airmen in the Reichwald cemetery, if you are interested please PM me an email address.

[RSwank]

This list of "unknown" crash locations shows 7 Lancasters from the 26/27 Nov 1943 raid.
http://www.lancaster-archive.com/lan...crashsites.pdf

Included on the list is DV297. Not all of those listed actually seem to have 5 (or more) missing crewmen, but some others in that category are DV339 DS723 and DS679. These 4 are included in the appendix of Alan W Cooper's book "Bombers Over Berlin" which is about the RAF Berlin offensive from November 1943 to March 1944. The raid on 26/27 November was the 4th raid in the series of raids.

For the remaining planes of the seven on the list above, DV247 had only two men killed. DV268 had six men killed but they were buried in Sage War Cemetery. JB350 had five killed but they were buried in Berlin. Information on all these planes is according Cooper's book, so perhaps it needs to be verified elsewhere. Cooper does include the crew names.

[Joe Potter]

We now have a new, and most likely contender, thanks to John Manrho, its a Halifax, or possibly a Lancaster, down at Niederlangen, 22.45 Hrs, 26.11.43, this is about 1km north of where these guys were buried.

[Alex Smart]

Hello,
The other Runnymede Names that are under 26/11/43 that I could match were -

STIRLING, R.J.T - F/O - 130875 - RAFVR - 21 SQN - Mosquito HX906.
HARRIS, G.H.R - F/O - 136362 - RAFVR - 100 SQN.
CHEETHAM, W.C - F/Sgt - 658945 - RAF - 180 SQN.
ROOTS, D - Sgt - 1333024 - RAFVR - 180 SQN
WHELAN, T.N - Sgt - 1330368 - RAFVR - 180 SQN.
180 Sqn a/c was Mitchell II - FL205.