Airmen and newspaper cutting
Title
Airmen and newspaper cutting
Description
Top left - full length image of an airman wearing battledress standing in long grass with a single story hut in the background. Captioned 'Mike'.
Bottom left - three-quarter length image of an airman wearing tunic and smoking a cigarette. Trees in the background.
Bottom centre - full length image of an airman wearing tunic with pilot's brevet and side cap with trees behind. Captioned 'The glorious Riccall surroundings'.
Right - newspaper cutting headline '101 airmen saved from North, Halifax "persuade foreign trawler"'. Account of air-sea rescues in North Sea.
Bottom left - three-quarter length image of an airman wearing tunic and smoking a cigarette. Trees in the background.
Bottom centre - full length image of an airman wearing tunic with pilot's brevet and side cap with trees behind. Captioned 'The glorious Riccall surroundings'.
Right - newspaper cutting headline '101 airmen saved from North, Halifax "persuade foreign trawler"'. Account of air-sea rescues in North Sea.
Language
Format
Three b/w photographs and one newspaper cutting
Is Part Of
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
PWickhamHW19010012
Transcription
[photograph]
Mike
[photograph]
[photograph]
The ‘glorious’ Riccall surroundings
101 airmen saved from North Sea
Halifax "persuades" foreign trawler
ONE hundred and one British and American airmen have been saved from the North Sea within 50 hours in the greatest air-sea rescue operation of the war.
All had been forced down through damage to their planes in the day and night raids on Germany. High-speed launches, Walrus amphibians, lifeboats. trawlers and fishing smacks co-operated in the search for survivors.
Lifeboats carried by planes were dropped three times to air crews nearly 200 miles apart. More than 200 R.A.F. and U.S. aircraft joined in the rescue work by day and night, and guarded the aircraft from enemy interference.
W.A.A.F. HELPED
A few of the ditched airmen were seen by the Royal Observer Corps, and saved within sight of the coast, but one crew of nine Americans was rescued when a lifeboat was dropped by parachute only 60 miles from Holland and Denmark.
In one afternoon 50 reports about dinghies which had been sighted were received by a single Coastal Command group flying control organisation. W.A.A.F.s recorded the messages and helped to plot the exact positions.
A lifeboat was first dropped just after noon last Monday, when Wing-Commander B.G. Corry D.F.C., saw a Fortress which had just come down about two miles away.
“It landed like a leaf on the water," said the wing commander, “and as I left it was chugging back to land with another plane providing air cover."
[inserted] [symbol] [/inserted] MINED SEA [inserted] [symbol] [/inserted]
Another lifeboat was dropped to a Fortress crew of nine 60 miles from Borkum, as the area was known to be sown with mines and it would have been dangerous for surface craft to attempt rescue.
On its way home a trawler stopped it, took the airmen on board and was headed towards enemy territory when a Halifax swept over and “persuaded” the trawler to turn about and head [inserted] [symbol] [/inserted] for England. [inserted] [symbol] [/inserted]
Mike
[photograph]
[photograph]
The ‘glorious’ Riccall surroundings
101 airmen saved from North Sea
Halifax "persuades" foreign trawler
ONE hundred and one British and American airmen have been saved from the North Sea within 50 hours in the greatest air-sea rescue operation of the war.
All had been forced down through damage to their planes in the day and night raids on Germany. High-speed launches, Walrus amphibians, lifeboats. trawlers and fishing smacks co-operated in the search for survivors.
Lifeboats carried by planes were dropped three times to air crews nearly 200 miles apart. More than 200 R.A.F. and U.S. aircraft joined in the rescue work by day and night, and guarded the aircraft from enemy interference.
W.A.A.F. HELPED
A few of the ditched airmen were seen by the Royal Observer Corps, and saved within sight of the coast, but one crew of nine Americans was rescued when a lifeboat was dropped by parachute only 60 miles from Holland and Denmark.
In one afternoon 50 reports about dinghies which had been sighted were received by a single Coastal Command group flying control organisation. W.A.A.F.s recorded the messages and helped to plot the exact positions.
A lifeboat was first dropped just after noon last Monday, when Wing-Commander B.G. Corry D.F.C., saw a Fortress which had just come down about two miles away.
“It landed like a leaf on the water," said the wing commander, “and as I left it was chugging back to land with another plane providing air cover."
[inserted] [symbol] [/inserted] MINED SEA [inserted] [symbol] [/inserted]
Another lifeboat was dropped to a Fortress crew of nine 60 miles from Borkum, as the area was known to be sown with mines and it would have been dangerous for surface craft to attempt rescue.
On its way home a trawler stopped it, took the airmen on board and was headed towards enemy territory when a Halifax swept over and “persuaded” the trawler to turn about and head [inserted] [symbol] [/inserted] for England. [inserted] [symbol] [/inserted]
Collection
Citation
“Airmen and newspaper cutting,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed January 17, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/40785.