Wreckage of WWII bomber could be buried with crew under German town

The crew of a Second World War bomber thought lost over the North Sea may actually be buried beneath a sleepy German town, incredible new evidence suggests.

Lancaster RA508 was one of more than 1,100 planes dispatched to bomb Dortmund on March 12, 1945 – and one of just two aircraft lost during the raid.

Her seven crew were never seen again, and her final resting place remains a mystery, with official records saying she was lost over the North Sea.

But now her true fate may have been uncovered, after partially-burnt RAF maps were recovered from a crash site in rural Germany.

Cologne-based researcher Manfred Weichert said he was '99.9 per cent sure' that RA508 crashed some 20 miles south of Dortmund.

He said: 'At the height of Cologne/Düsseldorf, the aircraft was most likely hit by flak.

'It veered off the approach route on the right while on fire, and crashed into a meadow in Ülfe 2, a district of Radevormwald, and exploded.'

Witness testimonies describe a four-engine plane coming down in the town that fateful day.

Local historian Friedhelm Brack, who collected the testimonies, had himself inspected the crash site as a teenager, recovering some maps from the wreckage a day after its loss.

The partially-burnt maps, one of which is marked 'RAF', show Britain and mainland Europe, and include a flight path over Dortmund, with the city itself highlighted.

Mr Brack later recalled how he and other local boys scavenged the wreckage under the noses of the Luftwaffe, taking ammunition and signal cartridges.

He wrote: 'Something white was peeking out from under a piece of the fuselage: navigation charts, printed in bright colors! They had survived the impact fire.

'We ripped them out, each of us boys trying to get as big a piece of them as possible.'

Before his death in 2015, Mr Brack submitted the maps to the Radevormwald town archives, where Mr Weichert would later find them.

Mr Brack always assumed that the plane was the PB187, the only other aircraft lost in the raid.

But PB187 actually crashed some 30 miles away in Duisburg, and with no other candidates, Mr Weichert believes the plane must have been RA508.

He said: 'The wreckage of the plane, which had exploded on the ground, was probably scrapped after the war, but there are no records of this.

'The burnt remains of the crew were buried in a wooden box in a bomb crater and then the crater was filled in.

'Since Bomber Command never searched for the aircraft, the mortal remains stayed there.

'And if they were not accidentally excavated over the decades, they are still there today.'

Final confirmation of the final resting place of RA508 is now tantalisingly close.

One of the maps was annotated by hand, perhaps by Herbert George Harding, navigator of the RA508.

Mr Weichert said: 'If I could only get hold of a handwritten document – a letter or similar – from Harding, I could use this for a graphological analysis.

'I could compare the handwriting and thus prove the crash site 100%.

'Therefore, I am hoping to find descendants who might be able to help me – then I could solve a mystery that has remained unsolved for 80 years.'

For descendants of other members of the crew, the discovery offers the hope of closure.

Ken Haw, 74, is the nephew and namesake of Flight Sergeant Kenneth Robert Haw.

He described how his aunt, Queenie, tried and failed to catch up with the young airman, her half-brother, as he raced off to RAF Metheringham on a bicycle for his final mission.

'That was the last a family member saw of him,' said Ken.

'They were all heroes in their own way, at the end of the day, who went out to do a job.'

John Fricker, nephew of pilot Frank Baker, shared Mr Weichert's confidence that the true crash site had been found, but thought it was a bittersweet discovery.

He said: 'I have mixed feelings about what is almost certainly the crash site of RA508 now being known.

'It is something that has puzzled me for twenty years but my hope had been that graves for my uncle and the other crew members would be found.

'The crew of RA508 sacrificed their lives in a bombing raid which deprived the Germans of supplies to fight the Russians on the Eastern Front.

'But I have mixed feelings about the loss of civilian lives.'

The March 12, 1945, raid on Dortmund was intended to destroy the city's worth as a transport hub.

One logbook called it 'the largest daylight raid ever carried out by the RAF' and said 'the stream of bombers was over 125 miles long'.

The crash site is now an industrial estate.

The RAF was contacted for comment.