1
25
142
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2175/38146/SWilliamsonF1311249v10003-0019.1.jpg
685add9bc85405e7fa9be0acfc2ca47e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Williamson, Frank-249
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. The collection concerns Frank Williamson (b. 1912, 1311249 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and newspaper clippings. He flew operations as an air gunner with 106 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Lyn Williamson and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Williamson, F
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-01-30
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
1,500-ton raid on Kassel supply link
[inserted] No 16 22/10/43 [/inserted]
[italics] Sunday Express Air Reporter [/italics]
R.A.F. LANCASTER STATION, Saturday.
SELDOM, if ever, has a force composed solely of four-engined bombers been used against a single target in such strength as that which last night showered its [missing word] bombs on Kassel, capital of the twin German [missing word] of Hesse and Nassau.
In 35 minutes they dropped a load of more than 1,500 tons. To reach this important and heavily defended railway and industrial centre (population 216,000) the armada of Lancasters, Stirlings and Halifaxes made a round trip of 1,000 miles.
They flew most of the way through violent electrical storms, heavy rain and ice-laden cloud, but found clear skies within 50 miles of Kassel, and bright moon above their target.
Kassel as a railway centre ranks with Swindon. It links central and western Germany. War supplies for the Russian front have passed through it on a colossal scale.
There are vast marshalling yards at the western end of the city, and close to them, yet away from the residential area, are two enormous factory groups employing many thousands of war workers.
'Not heavy loss'
From preliminary reports there is good reason to believe the target was very successfully dealt with, and the loss of 44 bombers is not considered unduly high for results achieved.
Of the large force of Lancasters sent out from the station I am visiting all were safely back before dawn.
Many of the losses suffered by other squadrons were due to intense night-fighter activity.
Several crews at this station reported successful encounters with large forces of fast high-flying fighters.
Two terrific explosions, one giving an orange flash which rose to 4,000 feet above the target, were mentioned by nearly every crew.
Many large fires were started, and there are unanimous reports of a 12,000ft. column of thick black smoke as the raiders turned for home.
A description of fighter flare lanes and how they are laid was given me by Flying Officer Thomas Neison, former golf professional of North Berwick, who was mid-upper gunner last night in W. for William.
Clusters of flares
Fighters wait until our bombing has actually started. As soon as the target to be defended has been identified they can be seen streaking towards it.
They start by laying clusters of bright yellow flares over the target. Then they lay lanes and avenues of them criss-crossing its approaches and surroundings for a distance of perhaps 20 miles.
The flares are launched by parachute at intervals of about 400 yards. The flares are made almost stationary for about 20 minutes.
Bomber crews going in early see the lanes of flares forming up behind them.
Frankfurt was also attacked, while Mosquitos bombed targets at Cologne, and other formations laid mines.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1,500 Ton Raid on Kassel Supply Link
Description
An account of the resource
A newspaper article about the attack on Kassel. It is annotated 'No 16 22/10/43'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-10-23
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Scotland--North Berwick
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One newspaper cutting
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SWilliamsonF1311249v10003-0019
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
air gunner
aircrew
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
Halifax
Lancaster
mine laying
Mosquito
propaganda
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1976/37223/LDowdingAF159677v1.1.pdf
8a4ec135f65d52a1402206e6df37946d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dowding, Alexander Francis
A F Dowding
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-30
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dowding, AF
Description
An account of the resource
One item. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Alexander Francis Dowding (48333, 159677 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 428 and 424 Squadorns. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Stewart Dowding and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff. <br /><br />Additional information on Alexander Francis Dowding is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/207686/">IBCC Losses Database</a>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alexander Francis Dowding’s flight engineer’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
A F Dowding’s Flight Engineer’s Flying Log Book covering the period from 06 June 1943 to 16 February 1944 when he became ‘missing-death presumed’. Detailing his flying training and operations flown as a Flight Engineer. He was stationed at RAF Leeming (1664 HCU), RAF Middleton St George (428 Squadron RCAF ) and RAF Skipton-on-Swale (424 Squadron RCAF). He flew seventeen night operations with 428 Squadron and one night operation with 424 Squadron, eighteen in total. Aircraft flown in was Halifax. Targets were Cologne, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Mannheim, Nurnburg, Milan, Peenemunde, Nuremburg, Mönchengladbach, Berlin, Kassel, Cannes, Frankfurt, and Leipzig. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Reilander and Squadron Leader Suggett.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form: no better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LDowdingAF159677v1
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-07-03
1943-07-04
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-28
1943-08-29
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-11-11
1943-11-12
1943-11-22
1943-11-23
1943-11-25
1943-11-26
1943-12-08
1943-12-09
1943-12-29
1943-12-30
1944-02-15
1944-02-16
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Durham (County)
England--Yorkshire
France--Cannes
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Italy--Milan
1664 HCU
424 Squadron
428 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
missing in action
RAF Leeming
RAF Middleton St George
RAF Skipton on Swale
training
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mr Alfred P., formerly of Gartenstraße 26, and makes the following statement:
The alarm went and there was hardly enough time to eat a bowl of soup. Because I’d just come home from work. So I grabbed together what I had on me. My mother brought everything down to the cellar. Because I was in Gartenstraße at my sister’s as I always had to eat there. My mother was also there; she lived in Zentgrafenstraße. (Mother Hedwig P., sisters Anna P. and Helene H.) During the raid I wanted to see a couple of times what was going on but was always thrown back by air pressure. When the flames started and everything was on fire, I went back up and brought the bedding and anything else I could grab into the cellar. Houses no 7 and 9 were already on fire and also many houses on Schäfergasse downwards. The horse butcher Herrmann from our house also brought a lot of things into the cellar. And then he said: “This one doesn’t even live in this house and helps to salvage things but you are afraid to go up. You have to take your hat off to him.” Then I went to have another look in the street, my mother and sister too. I said to my mother: “Just wait here a moment, I want to go back down and tell people there that they should get out.” And when I got into the cellar and told them, most of them said I’d gone mad, the cellar was safe and nothing could happen to them there. I said: “No, that’s a living grave. If we get to keep our things in here, we’ll be lucky,” I said.
And when I came back up, my mother had disappeared and my sister too. I shouted after them and heard my sister shout “Alfred” back once but I could not see them through the fire and the smoke. I thought, they’d already run across. But they had not stayed where I told them, I wanted to take them with me the way I wanted to go. I made my way towards the horse market, where Koch, the glazier, is. I jumped through a small column of fire because the Huth’s house opposite had already mostly collapsed. Still sounds of crashing and fire raining down, I don’t know what time it was. Then I went round the corner of the Tabella house which was already gone, here I was protected. A bunch of little children screamed, they were lying on a pile of sand. So I said to the children: “Come on, get up, I can’t carry you all, you’ll have to come after me.” But none of them came, no one of them reacted to what I’d said. So I went up Pferdemarkt and had to get across burning beams. It was the house of the clothes shop, next to Tabella, opposite the Hellmuth bakery. That’s where I realised that I had burnt my legs. I was still carrying my bike on my back because I thought I could drive down Königstraße. But you couldn’t do that. As I came to the corner where the department store was, I chucked it away, the frame had become so hot that I could not hold on to it. Then I went down Königstraße further because I could not get through Moltkestraße. I always looked for open spaces but could not get to Lutherplatz. So I ran to Jägerstraße. A burnt-out car was standing in the middle of the street; that was lucky for me. I crouched behind it for a moment. At that moment a column of fire shot out from Jägerstraße and I would not have managed to get through it if the car had not been there. (If we’d had water, we could have saved many a house.) Then the firestorm abated for a moment and I thought it’s time to get up and get on, further down. Just as I’d started, it started raining fire again. I’d only run a few paces, and I thought you can’t go back, you’ll have to run the short distance through it. I had everything burnt, my head, the hair had all gone, my hands, I could feel it on my legs and what I’d been wearing had turned into rags. Then I ran to Bremer Straße (Synagogue). There, I stood at a wall and tried to catch my breath. At that moment I also lost my sight. Someone came with a tin hat on their head and shouted: “Off the street, clear the street.” I could just about see him. I shouted back: “Come here if you want something!” So he came over to me, took me and I was carried down to the fire trenches in the Jew garden. That’s when the pain started and I started to whimper a bit. Someone gave me water from an old tin can; I had a burning thirst. They said to me: “Be careful that you don’t cut your lips on the tin!” Another woman put ointment on my hands. From there I was taken to the cellar of the Henschel admin building. A doctor dressed my burns provisionally. He also cut off the burnt skin. Then I was taken to another room where I was to sit on a bench but I immediately fell over. I heard only moaning and groaning. Then a truck came and took us to the district hospital. It must have been daylight as the sun hurt my eyes but I could not see it. In the bunker I had to walk as there were no stretchers. I was guided and put on a bed and then they took the rags off me. I stayed there until 6 October. [Would have to have been November.] Then I was on a transport bus to Eschwege. I don’t know much about that time because I started raving. I jumped out of the bed and did not want to lie down. But I don’t remember any of this. On 14 February I was discharged from Eschwege.
There was also someone called Gräser from Kasernen-straße 4 in that hospital. He ran the same way as I. His burns were much worse. He had three fingers amputated. There was no adult with the children at Pferdemarkt. They must have been about twenty children. At Pferdemarkt another child (from the Behrens’ house with the flowershop) must have run through the flames, to his grandad at Lindenberg, to Konrad Knipschild (with the nickname Sweet William) in Ochshäuser Straße. The parents of the boy died in the fire. The boy is about 10 years old and unharmed.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alfred P
Description
An account of the resource
Mr Alfred P's account of the events at Schäfergasse 5 and Gartenstraße 26.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-03-10
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 21
BKasselVdObmv10021
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
firefighting
home front
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present are Andreas H., master tailor, born 21 Nov. 1871 and Miss Emma H., born 7 March 1906, formerly of Schomburgstraße 10, now Wurmbergstraße 78 ½, and make the following statement:
When the alarm came I was sitting on my work table and was working on a uniform for someone from the railway – it was war work – normally I have private customers. Then the radio stopped. That was later, however, when my daughter had already come home – must have been after a quarter to eight. (Later, Dad, because I only got home at a quarter to eight.) My daughter had worked until seven and quickly eaten something. Mother had baked oatcakes and said: “You haven’t even tried the cakes. Well, you can do it when we get back up.”
From the window in one room, we could see the train station. This was always an orientation point when the lights were out. And the station was in the dark. So we put our coats on quickly. The girls went down first and Mother and I followed later. We had also packed our glasses but then everything went very quickly and I lost them. When I call it a day, I put the thimbles and glasses in my pockets now so that I don’t lose them again; they are indispensable. We had already left our luggage in the cellar. We had everything down there. People were laughing about us being so cautious. There were few guests in the hotel and so we hardly met anyone on the stairs. We, my sister and I, stood outside the house entrance with a few soldiers. Because a patrol group of the army police was in our house. And we said: “It’ll be nothing.” But then we saw the searchlights and they said: “Time to go to the cellar.” We also spoke to neighbours, the Buttstädts of no. 11, and she said to her husband: “Come on, Karl! Something bad could happen and then we would not be together.” They died, together with her 78-year old mother. And then we went down to the cellar and the ack-ack started shooting. And my sister said: “Let’s put on some more clothes; something might happen.” And I put on this grey dress and two summer coats. My sister put on her favourite coat, I will never forget that. And one of the soldiers, maybe 45 years of age, said to my father: “What a mess! I have my leave pass in my pocket and get the train to Frankfurt at half eleven.” By half eleven he was already dead. The leave pass they found on him four weeks later was his ID.
So we sat in the cellar, tightly packed, which I found uncomfortable. Because the shooting got fiercer and the drone more terrible. And Mrs Althans said: “Dear God, now we’ll be buried.” And I replied: “Keep calm!” And then the light flickered and I saw dirt trickling on my sister. And Mr Althans, the owner of the hotel, ran into the yard with some soldiers and came back and said: “We’re all doomed, there’s a phosphorous canister lying in the yard. And there’s fire in all four corners, fire everywhere.” And then came an explosive and a terrible bang. And the light came back but very faintly. And then the soldiers went up again to fight the fire in the yard and then the landlord came back and said: “Our staircase has collapsed.” This all happened in seconds and I don’t really know what went through my head.
Then all the soldiers went up to the yard to firefight. One of them gave me a wonderful briefcase and said: “But please do me the favour and keep it.” But I dropped it later anyway and the soldier was left there.
And then came the bomb which buried us all. There was a terrible bang, the lights went out and I was hit in the back by a beam and lay on my knees. I lost a shoe in that cellar when we were buried. But I left it there. Had my father been in the washhouse, he’d have been killed. I still see his torch sticking out. And then the fire came into the cellar from every opening and from the washhouse. That was phosphorous. There were also two boys, the children of the widow Maßberg (they were a quarter Jewish). They were lying in the washhouse and a soldier dug them out. The soldiers worked really hard. So we lay there for a few seconds and I thought: “Now you’re going to die. But when? No, you don’t have to die, you’re still strong.” So I struggled to my feet and the others did too. Now the shouting started, for every single one, to see whether they were still there. My wife was also lying in the dirt and under the rubble; she had a wound about 4 centimetres long on her head. Mother showed terrible courage. A soldier came and said: “We have to get out or we’ll suffocate; the fumes are getting through. So my mother went first with my sister and we followed them. But first we dug my father out from the dirt. He could not get out on his own. Stone, loam and bricks were lying on him. I had a beam pushing in the back of my neck. It had moved slowly, otherwise it would have killed me on the spot. So we made our way through the corridor, over the rubble and it had not settled yet, there were still hollows in it. So we got to the breakthrough and thought: “Heavens, what if the breakthrough is buried?” But it was open; that was a relief.
And people said: “We hope that the stairs from the cellar are still there.” And the stairs of that cellar were the only ones which were still there. (Bahnhofstraße 19, Hotel Vaterland)
So we went out and I got a shock. The building was already burnt to a shell. And my mother said: “What’s that, burning up there?” And I said: “Have a good look, that’s our homeland burning. And my mother said: “I’m not staying here!” And I said: “But where shall we go?” So we went down Bahnhofstraße a bit but on the pavement. Someone shouted: “Get off the pavement! Walk in the middle of the road!” And there was already muck falling from above, beams, bricks and roof tiles and there was still shooting – like from a machine gun. Constant explosions. We were overcome by a terrible feeling when we came out of Bahnhofstraße and saw that the whole city was on fire. Also the heat and the storm which went with it.
So we stepped into a house, that was Bahnhofstraße 7, and we took off our headscarves and coats and soaked them in a bucket of water. A woman was there who said: “Don’t be so unreasonable and use the whole of our water; we still need it to fight the fire.” But the whole quarter was already ablaze. My mother said again: “We have to get out!” Because the storm made it difficult for me to breathe. I still see my mother running in front of me, through the fire, and I’m thinking: It’s like in the movies; she’s running for her life. And fire was on the street, broken glass, up to my knees and I went through it with my bare foot and the torn stocking. The foot was not injured and not burnt.
So we arrived on Lutherplatz. It was still early and not many people had arrived yet. They all came later. Our eyes were burning, do you remember, Dad? There were people and smoke and fire came through the air and soldiers with horses. It whooshed and swooshed everywhere. There were a few young girls who had soaked their clothes so much that they stripped off and dried their clothes first. And I looked for the other people from our building and they said: “Let’s lie down together, we belong together.”
Then I found a pair of my friend's shoes and a woman took my left shoe because she had lost her right shoe.
Oh, we were so tired, we settled against the gravestones. And we really slept. And people said: “If that tower comes down, you will all have to leave. And then the whole of Gießbergstraße collapsed and the buildings on Lutherplatz and Spohrstraße and Wörthstraße.” We were lying right on the corner of Spohrstraße and I thought the houses would fall on top of us. People were very nice and no one complained. And they said: “Now we can understand the people of Hamburg.” And two women suddenly had a conversation about how best to have a dress made by a dressmaker. And it was terrible that you had to go [to the toilet]. People squatted at the corner of the church and people didn’t feel embarrassed. A man said to a woman: “I will do what you have just done” and squatted next to her. And when day broke, it was terrible. Bahnhofstraße was cleared by and by. Soldiers guided people along there. We got through with a real effort. The rubble went up to our knees and the overhead wires of the tram were lying on the street. And we passed our old home. So we went up there and met Mrs Thomas and she was crying (bakery, Bahnhofstraße23) because she’d lost all her pretty things. We said: “Be glad that you got out of there.” So we went up Kölnische Straße which was still burning and learnt that the whole city had been destroyed. You could see that from there. And that’s how we ended up with Hundelshausens. We had made an arrangement with them in case something would happen. And the two ladies Stegemann have taken us in. They are really warm-hearted people and we have been made welcome.
“Dad, you can’t complain, all our neighbours are dead, we did not salvage anything, not even a handkerchief, but we are alive!”
When the alarm came we would not have dreamt that anything like this would happen to us.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Andreas H and Emma H
Description
An account of the resource
Andreas H and Emma H's account of the events at Schomburgstraße 10 (Rheinischer Hof Hotel), Bahnhofstraße 19 and Lutherplatz 7.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-07-11
Contributor
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Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 98
BKasselVdObmv10098
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is the beer delivery driver Andreas N., born 11 April 1894, and makes the following statement:
We were standing in the yard. We saw an airplane drop a flare bomb and we (I, Seitz, Weckmüller and senior city official Stöppler and Mr Lange): “It’ll be a massive attack!” So we went down into the cellar. Every now and again we had a look as to what was happening and when the incendiaries came, we fought fires on the steps to the bunker and on the yard, in the washroom, in the office and in the attic and in the admin building. Around us, in the garden and in the fields were explosive bombs. So we fought the fires until we ran out of water, carried the air raid beds from the cellars, the tables and everything else we could salvage. We carried many bits from the office into the cellar. Those things were saved. But then the cars in the garage started burning and then the water was gone and we could not do anything further. The gas bottles with the propellant caught fire too and so we spent the whole evening like that. The sheds burnt out, and the washroom and the roof. Everything else was already destroyed by fire on 3 October. Ten horses died in that fire. Only one is still alive.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Andreas N
Description
An account of the resource
Andreas N's account of the events at the City Cleaning Department, Franzgraben 85.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-05-06
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
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eng
Identifier
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Record 80
BKasselVdObmv10080
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mrs Anna A., formerly of Hohenzollernstraße 28, now of Söhrestraße 15, and makes the following statement:
When the alarm came, we went immediately down to the cellar. We took our suitcases and blankets with us. And then it kicked off immediately, blasts everywhere. We were always lying on the ground, we fell over from the terrible air pressure and Yeee – we were on the ground. The men always wanted to go up and have a look but that was not possible. Those [phosphorous] canisters were dropping. We too had several canisters in the house, they came in from the sides. We could hear shouting from the neighbouring building where the restaurant Zeppelin was: “Fire!” We wanted to help but the smoke made it impossible and then we knocked through the breakthroughs. Then they came through to our cellar and wanted to get through to Kronprinzenstraße but they all came flooding back because everything was blocked, so they said. And so we went through the Zeppelin and through the restaurant where everything was on fire. The emergency crews did not leave us alone: “Get out, out, out!” In the street, we only saw fire, both sides were ablaze. We had already soaked our blankets in the cellar and wrapped them around us. Then we ran to the Viktoria shelter in front of the train station. It was about half nine. Everything was overcrowded in there.
After an hour, the air became so bad, we went out again, up the whole of Kölnische Straße, to the little fir forest but then we were warned that it was full of duds, so we ran through the fire, down Dörnbergstraße and sat down on a bench on Hindenburgplatz. My husband and I were on our own. My daughter had gone to shelter at the train station and my boy was on duty that night, in Bahnhofstraße. They are both alive. Thank goodness! We sat there with Mrs Schunk and her eight-year old boy, both from our house. A security guy came and said to us: “Dear people, leave; there’s a dud which can go off any minute.” So we went on, down Diakonissenstraße, when the dud went off; we felt the air pressure from it. There were a large number of storm troopers; they said we should go down Herkulesstraße to the secondary modern school. That’s where we went and waited till morning. The dud had exploded about midnight. Then we were given some food. We then walked to Harleshausen where we have friends. We stayed there for two days and then went to Lohfelden to my daughter’s flat. We fetched our suitcases two days later from the cellar; my daughter had salvaged our bedding during the raid. These things had survived in the cellar. Our daughter had bad smoke poisoning and had already been given injections for it in the shelter at the train station. My husband is very upset by the raid. He is already damaged from the First World War and now he had to go through this.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anna A
Description
An account of the resource
Anna A's account of the events at Hohenzollernstraße nos. 26 and 28, Hindenburg-platz.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-03-13
Contributor
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Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Identifier
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Record 28
BKasselVdObmv10028
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mrs Anna D., née B., born 5 September 1903, formerly of Wehlheider Straße 6, now of Friedenstraße 9, and makes the following statement:
I myself was in the Wintershall Ltd in Hohenzollernstraße and we were cleaning. Afterwards everything was a mess again. As the alarm came and the shooting started, we went into the cellar. And after a while, the house next door uphill was on fire. The fire was put several times, however, and the house is still there. The cleaning women and the air raid wardens were in the cellar. The firefighters were on the upper floors of the house. They were two office blocks. A canister dropped down all the way to the third floor. So the firefighters went up again. But the fire was so fierce in the books and files and papers that they could not anything anymore. As the fire came down, we had to leave the house through the breakthroughs. We ran uphill. And from there we made our way home. And as we got there towards half nine, we saw our misery.
In Wehlheider Straße an explosive bomb dropped in front of the house. The house had, however, already burnt down. And those who were in that cellar had been thrown about like dice and were buried from one side. Three quarters of the house had collapsed on one side. The people there pulled each other out. Parts of the house still stood although the walls had gone. And as they got out, they saw that the whole street had gone, all the houses had disappeared. When I came, my part was burning down. Despite the hail of bombs, they made their way across to the cellar of the big house on the corner. There, the mains had burst so that they had to make their way through the breakthrough into the cellar of the next building. That’s the time when I arrived and so we wandered about the whole night until the next morning. On the street a man died, the farmer Haake. I don’t know of what he died. He was an old man and the only one from his house who’d stayed whereas all the others had run to the public shelter. He always stayed and that is where he died.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anna D
Description
An account of the resource
Anna D's account of the events at Hohenzollernstraße nos. 137 ½ and 139, Wehlheider Straße 6.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-04-18
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 72
BKasselVdObmv10072
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mrs Anna K., née Ritter, born 20 June 1908, formerly of Wittichstraße 49, now of Mosheim, district Homberg/Efze and makes the following statement:
Our house stood alone in the Auefeld, in a large orchard of 40 trees. None of these still stands. All gone. It was alarm and I immediately went down with my suitcases and my children. Granny had been reading the newspaper and was very calm but I was very agitated. I had hardly arrived in the cellar when the shooting started and I dressed the children in the cellar. The French civilian also carried things down and kept an eye on what was happening and then he said: “The attic is on fire.” He wanted us to hand him sand to fight the fire. Granny followed him. And we stayed in the corridor of the cellar, not the air raid cellar; that was maybe our good fortune. We never heard or saw anything of them again. They had hardly gone up there when the water came running down the walls from the bath tubs. We have no idea whether anything exploded up there.
And then fire shot through the coal bunker where the coke was – whether a mine exploded at the moment, my hair was completely roughed up, I could not get them back in order, and the children had their eyelashes singed off. The light had already gone out earlier. Terrible dust and dirt and smoke and we wanted to get out to the washhouse but that did not work, the door was already three quarters buried; the conservatory had been torn off and lay in front of it. So we tried to get out through the regular exit of our air raid cellar but that too was already blocked, and so we went out directly through the front door, but it wasn’t as if we could just have walked out nicely, because the staircase was on fire and we had to squeeze through the debris. We had only been in the cellar for less than half an hour.
Then we crossed the street, everything was a mess and wires were lying on the ground. We went into the house next door but no soul was left, the whole house had been torn open. Just before we left, incendiaries had dropped into our cellar through the windows. Little Richard (two years old) wasn’t wearing his shoes anymore, I don’t know why. The children shouted only once: mum, but so loudly that the people on the street could hear them. Rolf was five in December. My husband is on the Eastern front. He had just started his journey and arrived the day after. We had run to Petsch’s house. Behind the house lay a blockbuster and innumerable incendiaries. In the garden, we had a solid little house that was blown over by the air pressure. And at the front of the house was a dud. The cellars all burnt out completely. With us in the cellar was the Hässler family, fairly old people, and Mrs Umbach from Niederzwehren.
Granny, my mother-in-law, was Martha Korn, née Fuhrmann, born 21 May 1873. She was found in the cellar under the kitchen when the cellar was dug out, she had been looked for specially (found 1 February 1944).
The Frenchman was found the day after the raid. He was lying on the cooker in the kitchen. His name was Fassio and he was from Nice.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anna K
Description
An account of the resource
Anna K's account of the events at Wittichstraße 49.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-04-06
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 61
BKasselVdObmv10061
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: The owner of the wire-fence factory Sch., formerly of Wolfhager Straße 38, Kassel, at the moment of Wurmberg-straße 75 makes the following statement:
We experienced 22 October in the air raid cellar of our building. We had not gone to the one in the rear building as we usually did but had stayed in the front-building. In the cellar of the rear building there was only the plant security force of the machine factory Beck and Henkel. I guess they had lacked the courage to come through the flames. The following morning we saw their bodies lying in the street.
We experienced the raid in our cellar, heard the close hits of heavy bombs and also the dull thud of a dud which my son (a soldier with the panzers) discovered accidentally as a ten hundredweight bomb in the rubble of the houses. When the firestorm started, I said to my wife: “I can just as well die in the street, I'll make my way to the shelter of the train station in the lower town. I hope that my wooden leg won’t catch fire. If you won’t come, I’ll go anyway.” Then we soaked our coats and hats and I went first, all the people in the cellar followed me. It must have been like that in many cases: where there was someone who took charge, the others followed. The train station in the lower town had already been agreed as meeting and rescue point in case of such a danger.
We had put out several incendiaries in our house but the sparks were flying and constantly brought new fire so that it was all for nothing. I have been told that two bodies were taken out from our cellar but these must have been strangers who fled as far as this and then could not go on. Our building burnt down completely, we didn’t even save a suitcase. All the crystal glasses bar one had melted into unrecognisable lumps in the cellar. Only the china survived reasonably well.
My personal investigation showed that some of the foreign workers from the rear building saved themselves. One woman supposedly persuaded the others to stay because this was less dangerous than going outside. That is why the others died.
Account B, dated 18 April 1944
Present is the wire-fence manufacturer Anton Sch., born 12 March 1894, at Olpe near Meschede in Westphalia, formerly of Wolfhager Straße 38, now of Wurmbergstraße 75, and makes the following statement:
On the evening of the bombing, I was at home with my wife. We were on our own because our son is a soldier in the East. After dinner I listened to the wireless which stopped about twenty to eight. I had already been expecting a terror raid for several days; I had a sense that something was going to happen. And when the wireless stopped, I brought suitcases and other possessions down into the cellar of our four-storey building for the first time in the war. I found carrying difficult and usually my wife did it, because I lost a leg and therefore have problems carrying. At the same time, I urged my wife to ready herself for a raid because I considered a raid on Kassel a real possibility. From what I observed from the short period before, in which terror raids on other cities happened, they all started shortly after dusk. My wife, however, warded this off: “You hear all sorts.” This was probably intended more to embolden herself than to dispute the possibility of a raid. She nevertheless started the preparations for a raid early for once.
After we had brought our possessions into the cellar, we went back up to our flat on the first floor. I went onto our balcony from which I could observe the southwestern sky. After a few minutes – it may have been about eight – I heard the sound of airplanes in the air. At the same time, the siren on the school in Wörthstraße started to sound. The sky was dark and overcast. You could still hear pedestrians in the street as in normal times. The sound of propellers continued strongly and I had the impression that the airplanes were just flying over us because I could see no lights in the sky. I felt spooked, however, and said to my wife: “Come on, let’s go to the cellar, something’s in the air, something is not right.” With these words I closed the door to the flat and went down the stairs. No one else was there. We were the first ones to arrive in the cellar.
More or less at the same moment as we stepped into the cellar, the floodgates of hell opened in the sky above Kassel for a storm of half an hour which even the boldest imagination could not have pictured. Without pause or break you could hear hissing, whistling, gurgling, roaring, crashing, thundering, smashing, battering, and hammering so that you could believe that the end of the world had arrived. The other residents came flying into the cellar. Most of them only had a little hand luggage and some were insufficiently dressed. The general scare had paralysed people so that neither the children nor the adults could make a sound of fear. In the cellar, we did not hear the innumerable incendiaries which dropped nearby. The whistling and hissing of the heavy bombs and blockbusters, however, was bloodcurdling and they exploded with ear-splitting crashes. According to a later count, up to twelve heavy bombs and blockbusters hit within a radius of 50 to 100 metres, which I counted in the first half hour in the cellar. A twenty hundredweight bomb landed as a dud and lay about 15 metres away from the house. My son found it later in the rubble on the neighbouring property of Beck and Henkel. That was four weeks after the attack when my son was on leave because of the bombing raid.
The cellar was well prepared and supported as far as was humanly possible. The cellar vents of which four fifth were below ground, had been bricked up as required and we had also created an emergency exit at the far end of the corridor by breaking through the strong outer wall of the building which we had then again bricked up and about a meter further we had a shield wall and a concrete ceiling as required.
When the first bombs hit about 25 past eight, the bricks from the vents and the breakthrough came flying through the cellar without, however, causing any damage. By now, every close explosion blew dust and air in through the holes in the cellar so that you would have been forgiven for believing that the house would collapse at any moment. You could hear from the outside the rattling of the window panes and the roof tiles which dropped on the pavement. The bursting and collapsing of nearby buildings made a dreadful sound which we could hear, the terrible thunder of two factory chimneys which both fell onto neighbouring properties. Through the cellar vent we could see a small piece of the sky which shone red with fire. After about three quarters of an hour it became a little quieter. There was a lull in the bombing.
That was when two men from the house dared go outside. They came back immediately, however, and gave us the terrible news: “All the buildings are on fire, the whole neighbourhood.” Our building, however, was not on fire yet. After another ten minutes, there was another lull in the bombing. That’s when they made a quick round through the building. All the doors and windows had been blown out and some of them also blocked the staircase. They nevertheless went up to the third floor. Only two rooms in the Heimbergs’ flat were on fire. The door to our flat was also on fire and an incendiary was lying in my son’s bedroom. We put out all of these fires with sand and water. In the meantime a hurricane-like storm arose, that was the pull of the firestorm, which hissed and swept through the streets and the houses. That brought a rain of sparks. It was like a snow storm with fire. The sparks flew into the houses and ate into wooden objects and so our house was set alight too by this storm of little sparks.
It may have been about half nine. The people in the cellar were still paralysed with fear. The heat of the terrible fires around us made staying in the cellar unbearable. It became clear that we had to leave our shelter. I went up to see for myself and used the opportunity to take a few files from my office which was on the first floor and bring them down to the cellar. The question which bothered me, was how to we get out of here into the open? In the cellar we would inevitably burn to death. When I said as much in the cellar, people became agitated. Outside, more bombs dropped. The children were screaming by now and a four-year old girl started praying loudly and called upon her dead little brother: “Rudolf, you are in heaven, you must save us!” Others lay on the floor. One woman held her head in her hands and pulled her jacket over her ears. Little Marga kept shouting: “Do we have to die? Will we be killed?” Then the little one said: “You must pray too, you should all pray!” Someone said: “We won’t get out of here. There’s fire everywhere.” My wife, too, said: “We have to get out of here, there’s fire everywhere; the firewall is coming towards us.” That was because she had been upstairs in our flat and had seen the mess. She thought, however, that the house could be saved if it was not set on fire by flying sparks. But we could not stay, the smoke and the heat would have killed us.
She made another round through the flat. The beautiful crocheted runner was still lying on the table but the lamp had dropped on it. Splinters were everywhere. The door to the smoking room was still closed. Everything was as it should be here, only the windows were broken. Everything stood and hung where it belonged. The clock on the wall ticked as if nothing had happened. In the bedroom, the windows and the mirror were broken. Then she came into Karlheinz’s room. An incendiary was lying in front of the wardrobe. It had dropped into the room at an angle. She took it with her bare hands and threw it out of the window. Then she went to the kitchen. The cooker stood diagonally in the room. But the furniture was all where it belonged, only the windows and the mirrors were broken. Then she ran down the stairs again. At that moment, a jamb from a window hit her in the back. In the meantime, our air raid warden, Mr Meister, shouted: “Mrs Sch., I order you to come down!” But she thought: “Take a flying jump, I’ll save what I can,” and carried bedding and clothing down. The other people in the house, Meisters and Ottes and Heimbergs, followed her example and tried to save their belongings.
Then the raid was over. Now everyone ran upstairs and inspected the damaged flats and ruins and everyone understood that we had to leave the house because the factory behind us was on fire and the wall of fire was coming towards us. And then she went into the shop, into the office where the padded door was lying on the floor. And in the office were about 50 people who had fled there. And a soldier kept running out to check whether the roof frame had not caught fire yet. “It’s not burning yet,” he shouted, “it’s not burning yet – now it’s on fire.” Everywhere people sat, on the floor, on the desk. And when the roof starting burning and the Heimbergs’ flat too was on fire, we left. We made an attempt to leave, armed with suitcases and clothes. And we saw to our horror that all the streets were on fire. So we took everything back down in the cellar and locked it up. And then we tried again, without our belongings, and turned back again. And then we soaked our blankets, dipped the hat in the water and used it as a scoop and the dipped the child’s coat into the water. Ottes’ little one we put into the pram and then, we first, with the raffia bag at hand, a soaking wet blanket over our heads.
Before we left the cellar, we each had a sip of cognac to give us courage. It was a French Hennessy cognac. We had saved it for an emergency. And then we drank it before we left, and quickly another sip, and then we went out.
I was wearing Karlheinz’s rain cape and a hat. And because the fire was so fierce, people wanted to return to the cellar but I said: “Then we might as well die on the street.” The first sight of the street was a sight of hell. All the buildings were on fire, nearly every cobble was on fire, the spring steel factory was collapsing, and flames were shooting out as if blown by bellows from the buildings on both sides. I had to throw the cape away. We turned right, towards the lower town train station. In parts, there were high piles of burning clutter and debris on the street and the pavement. We left the pram in the street, we could not get through with it. The father took his child on his arm. We climbed slowly over barriers and burning barricades. I shouted: “I can’t get through with my leg; if only the wooden peg doesn’t start burning.” Also my wife’s pretty blue shoes were already charred at the tips. In my desperation, I threw the cape away and held a wet cloth in front of my mouth.
We were lucky that the street was broad otherwise we would not have been able to save ourselves. So we arrived at the train station where there were already quite a many people. We thought we could have a breather, air, air, air! But the sparks were flying here even more. You could not see the city burning because everything was shrouded in smoke and flame. Around us, a scene of horror. Mothers with their little children were sitting on the bare ground and sunk over with exhaustion. A woman was shouting for her husband: “Have you not seen my husband?” “Dear lady, how would I recognise your husband?” “Well, a man on his own?” Another woman kept shouting: “Heinrich, where are you? Heinrich, you died today. Heinrich, you are in heaven. Heinrich, you’re up there. Heinrich? I am wearing your shoes. The toes of your shoes are charred.” Another woman kept shouting: “I have lost everything, I have lost everything.” “Don’t drive us nuts; be quiet, we too lost everything.”
We had put apples into our pockets. I had an apple in my hand and gave one to little Marga too. A woman came: “Oh, please give me a bite too!” She tore the apple nearly out of my hand. The thirst was unbearable.
In the meantime, one railway tipper after the other burnt out. The sheds of the goods office burnt out completely. Thousands of hundredweights of coal burnt in the stores of Kassel’s coal merchants. It has been said that it was 2,000 hundredweight. The soot and smoke were terrible. The rain of sparks was such that we were driven further and further, we went from one wagon to the next to huddle and find shelter. “Continue to the cemetery!” That was what we were told during the night. Our eyes were burning terribly. We had wet cloths with us. People tore them out of our hands. We had no water, we could not find a single drop. Then we fled into a shed. A woman was lying there. It was the building where the railway kept the money. The windows were all broken but so far the building held up. We were standing packed like sardines but no one complained. Only the wounded were screaming for water. A lady had terrible burns. She kept shouting: “Please help me, don’t you have tablets? I am thirsty.” Luckily, my wife had her air protection satchel with her. She was able to give the woman some pain killers. A gentleman gave her a glass of wine which he had fetched from the stationmaster’s flat. The woman thanked my wife and said: “Are you a first responder?” And then we searched for someone who could carry the woman away. But she had to stay there for a whole hour that night before one of the carriers was able to come. They all had their hands full and could not manage.
When we were watching as the buildings all burnt down, a man came who kept shouting: “My beautiful cigars, my best cigars!” They were more important to him than the building. And I said: “Look, all the buildings are on fire except the Iron Corner which isn’t. The name is entirely apt.” But later the Iron Corner burnt down too, set on fire by flying sparks.
Mrs Otte stood there with her child. The child did not have anything to drink so the father went, I don’t know how far, and acquired a drop of milk and box of biscuits. And in the meantime, a bus had arrived and took people away. And as the father came back and people on the bus were shouting and waving, he ran away instead of following the bus because he was afraid that people would take off him what little he had. So a woman got off the bus and fetched him and calmed him down. He should come with her, his family was on the bus.
And then the greetings of the neighbours: “Dear God, you are here too? You too?” And then Miss Heinze came, where we had our garage, and said: “Your car was also destroyed by the fire.” And then, there was Mr Lieberum who lay on the ground and cried. We asked: “Where are your daughter and your boy?” “I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything!” They saved themselves but with severe burns.
Mr Otte wanted us to get away in his car. But he could not get through. We hoped that we had at least saved the things in our cellar. We had brought down everything: crockery and bedding and blankets and clothes and hats and shoes and fur coats and the whole of bookkeeping with two typewriters, the cash and the safe box. Churchill got everything, the bastard.
And now morning broke with beautiful sunshine. But the sun came through smoke, about half eight. I won’t forget it. Then busses came and took us. And then my wife noticed that she had hurt her foot, because she had fallen down the stairs when the bloke downstairs started shouting. And then a bus came which took us into the countryside to Calden. And there, we received a warm welcome. But we were not able to sleep. We washed ourselves first – because we looked like gypsies but we were glad to have escaped from hell.
We left in the hope that that we would be able to have something to drink and sleep. The following day we wanted to go back in our house and save our things from the cellar. But it was full of smoke and we could not get in. Everything was destroyed by the fire. Later, the whole building collapsed. After three days we stood in front of the ruins of our building and our belongings and held the keys to the house in our hands. We still have them.
In the rear building, the people who did not want to leave all suffocated and then were lying on the street as charred corpses. That is what would have happened to us if we had not escaped the fire on time.
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Title
A name given to the resource
Anton Sch and anonymous
Description
An account of the resource
Two accounts of the events at Wolfhager Straße 38.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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1944-04-18
Contributor
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Harry Ziegler
Rights
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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.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Identifier
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Record 70
BKasselVdObmv10070
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
fear
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
-
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
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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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mr Anton J., Kassel-Kirchditmold, Opferhof 3 and makes the following statement:
On the evening in question I was visiting Mr Iffert in his flat. Present were also his wife, his father, his son, his sister-in-law, Mrs Hausmann, and the apprentice Mohr. The two assistants had left the house a little earlier. We were having tea. When the alarm came, I was standing outside, on Freiheiter Durchbruch. I made tracks. As Mr Iffert confirmed later, his family went down to the air raid cellar whereas he had to join his volunteer unit. This was a bit further up on the same street. When the incendiaries created the first fires, Mr Iffert helped with rescue and fire-fighting. When the bombs stopped dropping, he found time to attend to his family. The relevant block leader informed him that his relatives were no longer in the house but had to flee through a breakthrough into the neighbouring Scheldtsche house. The whole street had been on fire. Explosives had been dropped everywhere too. Mr Iffert then started to search but he was in the dark because there was no electricity and he did not have a torch either. His search was unsuccessful. He made his way through all the cellar breakthroughs but did not find anything. He now believed that his relatives had saved themselves and returned to the rescue and fire-fighting operation in the Wildemanns-gasse and the Platz der SA.
He only discovered a trace of his relatives a few days later, in the staircase of the public air raid shelter Hinter der Waage 1. Here, he found his father whom he could identify without any problems. He had two gold pieces with him and a fob chain which he knew well. From this, he drew the conclusion that his other relatives had to be also in the air raid shelter. This assumption proved to be correct. When we sifted the ashes and remnants of bones which had been found in the cellar, a process in which I was involved – we put up a big sieve and poured everything through it – he found his wife’s key ring, his father’ and his sister-in-law’s wedding bands and his wife’s half-charred wedding band. They came to this air raid shelter through the breakthroughs. In that cellar we found 21 wedding bands, 2 dog-tags of soldiers, the baldric of a work command leader, several bags, wrist watches, signet rings, medals, brooches and other things. We passed them on to the detective force.
Iffert’s air raid cellar was so well preserved that nothing would have happened to them there. It had not overheated. People had lost their heads, however, and ran through all the breakthroughs. It was the result of poor leadership.
I was on duty outside during the raid. I was in a cellar in Wolfsangerstraße. The house had already been wrecked on 3 October. The rest was destroyed during that night. I think it was no 61.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anton, J
Description
An account of the resource
Anton J's account of the events at Kassel-Kirchditmold, Opferhof 3.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-02-26
Rights
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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.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Identifier
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Record 6
BKasselVdObmv10006
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1412/26738/LTindallAJ173966v1.2.pdf
f71a81fa60cca73bbffd928026a637c0
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Tindall, Arthur John
A J Tindall
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-03
Rights
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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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tindall, AJ
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Arthur John Tindall DFC (1388739 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 97 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by June Tindall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Arthur John Tindall’s navigator's, air bomber's and air gunner’s flying log book
Identifier
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LTindallAJ173966v1
Rights
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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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
A J Tindall’s log book covering the period from March 1942 to 6 November 1945. Detailing his flying training and operations flown as wireless operator/air gunner. He was stationed at RAF Yatesbury (2 RS), RAF Mona (5 AGS), RAF Cottesmore (14 OTU), RAF Wigsley (1654 HCU), RAF Upwood (PFNTU), RAF Bourn and RAF Coningsby (97 Squadron). Aircraft flown in were Dominie, Botha, Wellington, Lancaster, Stirling, Anson and Proctor. He flew a total of 30 night operations with 97 Squadron (first Tour) and 10 night and 2 day operations with 97 Squadron (second tour), a total of 42. Targets were Stuttgart, Hannover, Berlin, Leipzig, Cologne, Frankfurt, Brunswick, Augsburg, Laon, Munich, Schweinfurt, Kjeller, L’Isle Adam, Brest, Argentan, Etampes, Poitiers, Gelsenkirchen, Prouville, Donge and Givors. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Johnson, Squadron Leader Cawdery, Flight Lieutenant Clarke and Wing Commander Ingham.
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Format
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One booklet
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1943-10-07
1943-10-08
1943-10-09
1943-10-18
1943-10-20
1943-10-21
1943-10-22
1943-11-03
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-22
1943-11-23
1943-11-24
1943-11-26
1943-12-02
1943-12-04
1943-12-16
1943-12-17
1943-12-20
1943-12-24
1944-01-14
1944-01-27
1944-01-28
1944-01-30
1944-02-14
1944-02-25
1944-02-26
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-03-22
1944-03-23
1944-04-10
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-28
1944-04-29
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-09
1944-06-10
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-21
1944-06-22
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-31
1944-08-06
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-14
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Norway
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
England--Wiltshire
France--Argentan
France--Auxi-le-Château
France--Brest
France--Étampes (Essonne)
France--Givors
France--Laon
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Poitiers
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Munich
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Norway--Kjeller
Wales--Anglesey
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
14 OTU
1654 HCU
17 OTU
84 OTU
97 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
bombing of the Pas de Calais V-1 sites (24/25 June 1944)
Botha
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Master Bomber
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
Proctor
RAF Bourn
RAF Coningsby
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Desborough
RAF Mona
RAF Silverstone
RAF Upwood
RAF Wigsley
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1766/31210/LReadAW50611v1.2.pdf
939def25b9bc43026e42a11a140eab72
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Read, Aubrey William
Read, A W
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. The collection concerns Flying Officer Aubrey Read (1920 - 1943, 627232, 50611 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photographs and documents. He flew operations as a a wireless operator with 106 Squadron and was killed 26 November 1943. <br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Leitch and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle. <br /><br />Additional information on Aubrey read is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/119409/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Read, AW
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-01-07
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Aubrey Read’s RAF observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Flying Officer Aubrey Read’s RAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book from 30/9/42 to 26/11/43, detailing training and operations as a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner. Based at RAF Walney Island (aka RAF Barrow in Furness) (No. 10 Air Gunnery School), RAF Yatesbury (No. 2 Signals School), RAF Saltby and RAF Cottesmore (14 OTU), RAF Wigsley (1654 Conversion Unit), RAF Syerston and RAF Metheringham (106 Squadron). Aircraft flown: Dominie, Proctor, Defiant, Wellington IC, Manchester, Lancaster I and Lancaster III. Records a total of 23 night operations (plus three returned early), final entry reads “Bombing - Berlin failed to return”. Targets in Germany and Italy are: Berlin, Bochum, Cologne, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Gulf of Danzig, Hamburg, Hanover, Kassel, Krefeld, Leverkusen, Mannheim, Milan, Mulheim, Munich, Nurnburg, Oberhausen, Peenemunde and Remscheid. His pilot on operations was Flying officer Hoboken, with second pilots Flight Sergeant Cheney, Sergeant Holburn and Flying officer Banfield.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-09-30
1943-11-26
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LReadAW50611v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Cumbria
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
England--Wiltshire
Italy--Po River Valley
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Remscheid
Italy--Milan
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Poland--Gdańsk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-06-12
1943-06-13
1943-06-14
1943-06-15
1943-06-16
1943-06-17
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-07-08
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-07
1943-08-08
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-22
1943-08-23
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-09-29
1943-09-30
1943-10-02
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-11-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
106 Squadron
14 OTU
1654 HCU
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Defiant
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Manchester
mine laying
missing in action
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Cranwell
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Metheringham
RAF Saltby
RAF Syerston
RAF Walney Island
RAF Wigsley
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is August Keppler, born 18 August 1893 in Kassel, senior inspector in the Public Welfare Office, and makes the following statement:
That evening I was on air raid watch with the temporary employee Wasmuth, the administrative employee Mössner and Miss Kühlborn. After the alarm came the reinforcements: Inspector Grein, Secretary Dehmel and the Assistant Gockel.
When I arrived at eight in the evening, I already thought that something was going to happen. I immediately issued instructions to connect the hose of the hand-held pump to the tap in the yard and to unlock the padlocks on the iron doors on the exits from the shelter. I had been on duty during an earlier raid and had observed that these little locks were difficult to open in the dark. After we had connected the hose, I personally opened the door to the shelter in no. 14. The alarm came while we were busy with our preparations.
Then we went into the cellar and connected the telephone. We noticed the so-called Christmas trees in the sky and immediately after that the first bombs were dropping. If we consider morale, when the first bombs dropped, you could always hear afterwards the buildings crumble and collapse. A few people from the neighbourhood came into our room too. It was not really a public shelter but some of the buildings around us did not have suitable cellars. Because of the suction from the air, the doors were pulled open outwards, including the iron guard doors. The result was that the gasses from the fire and the explosions were pressed into our room. The air became very bad for breathing and most of the people were sitting there with soaked handkerchiefs. We made various control rounds in the building and put out an incendiary which had dropped in. When I went up next time, the sports hall with its tarred roofing felt was on fire and the upper floors of the old town hall too. When I got to the first floor, the ceiling had already burnt through so that you could not be sure in those narrow corridors whether the way back had been cut off by fire. We tried nevertheless to fight the fire but there was no water anymore. Otherwise we might have been able to save the lower floors.
The air raid shelter was so full of smoke that I had to give the order to evacuate. Some people did not want to leave because they were afraid. So I said: “Those who don’t leave now will be lost.” We wanted to try and jump across the rain of fire above the entrance – in the meantime we had soaked our coats and blankets with water in the cellar. I just wanted to jump when someone shouted: “We could try to get through the breakthrough towards Fünffensterstraße. The breakthrough leading downhill could no longer be used because the houses were already burning low down. But the same started to happen uphill and it was high time that we got through there. I was the last to leave the cellar through the breakthrough. The others had taken the lights with them. I shouted to make sure that no one was left. It was very dark around me. We got out through the corner building on Fünf-fensterstraße. The house was on fire down to the first floor. We than ran up Karlsstraße to Friedrichstraße. We could still run there without too much trouble. And from there we got to Schöne Aussicht where the art gallery is. There we lost one another in the throng.
When I got home to Kaiserstraße 68 via long detours, I was surprised to find that the building was still standing.
I then made my way to the civic centre – it must have been about half three in the morning. Everything was dark here and no one from the city employees was there. It had been agreed that this is where we would meet after a terror attack. I then tried on a circuitous route to get to the agreed meeting point, Murhardpark. I went along Hohenzollernstraße to get to Murhardpark. But I could not get beyond Annastraße. So I had to take Parkstraße, Kölnische Allee, Viktoriastraße and got to the square in front of the railway station. Here, it was mad. Only men on their own were scurrying about. The railway station was on fire, Fürstenhof, Kaiserhof, Nordischer Hof, all the great hotels and buildings too. In Bahnhofstraße, one could hardly breathe. The rain of sparks were so heavy that I had to turn back again. A few buildings had already collapsed and on Orleansstraße was a wall of rubble and I thought to myself: No one has got out of this alive. So I tried Kurfürstenstraße. The tram wires were on the ground and it was a terrible mess. I finally got to Murhardpark via Theaterstraße, Friedrichsplatz and Schöne Aussicht. I could not find anyone there either. The fire in Wilhelmshöher Allee was not so fierce anymore, most buildings had already burnt down, and one could get through. By about five, I went home. At half seven I went back to the civic centre to report for duty.
In Opernstraße the savings bank was on fire and you could not get through that way. I had difficulties getting back to Friedrichsplatz.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
August Keppler
Description
An account of the resource
August Keppler's account of the events at Obere Karlsstraße 12/14 (Old Townhall, Public Welfare Office).
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-05-10
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 84
BKasselVdObmv10084
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
fear
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
shelter
target indicator
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mrs Auguste Bolte, née Heinemeier, born 19 August 1874, widow of the weigher Heinrich Bolte, and makes the following statement:
My husband had been ill. He was 85 years old and had been ill in bed since the raid of 3 October. Our flat was above the great gateway of the Renthof, on the fourth floor. There were only three flats in the building, the rest were offices. We’d been living there for 36 years; my husband had been employed by the council. We lived there with Mrs Rehberg and we were supposed to be evacuated for a while. The air raid warden Königsdorff always wanted to be rid of us through evacuation. We all refused, however. So he said: “Well, if you don’t want to but we won’t look after you.” Besides, the night before, someone from the local branch of the party, which met down in the cellar, a Mr Wickert of Renthof 3 came and said to my husband: “Mr Bolte, everything is still calm but should it get worse, we’ll come and carry you down.” I had also said to the seventeen-year old daughter of the furnace feeder of the ecclesiastic office in Renthof 5: “Miss, if it gets worse, then come and fetch my husband, I can’t do it on my own. We’ll put him on a chair and carry him down.” That’s what I said to the daughter. And as the alarm came, I dressed my husband. Then I heard that the air raid warden ran down the stairs with his family, that’s what I heard. Then Mrs Rehberg came and went down – slowly, she was an old woman – and I said to her: “Send someone up, please, who will take my husband down.” I then fetched a few things together and dressed my husband but no one came.
Then the shooting started and I took my husband by the arm and he took his suit under his arm and I my little suitcase with the few valuables. So we got to the third floor. Then came the air pressure, a blockbuster must have gone down, and the ceiling fell in. And then he collapsed. He fell in a heap on the stairs. So I took the wool blanket off him and threw my suitcase down next to him and wanted to get help. I went down and said: “Why isn’t someone coming to get my husband?” Three gentlemen from the ecclesiastic office were there. One of them said: “It’s too late now, it’s the responsibility of the land-registry office” – because that was the wing of the building in which we lived. I was speechless when I heard that and not even five minutes later came the direct hit and just where I’d come through, into the filing room.
And so the exit for all of us was blocked. We first had to dig one. The furnace feeder from the ecclesiastic office dug an exit and then smashed through the wall towards Renthof. That was not a breakthrough but a thick wall. It was fortunate that there was a small void in that thick wall, otherwise we wouldn’t have managed. I held the little lamp from beginning to end and was the last to leave the cellar. When we were all out, a fireman took me, the Renthof was ablaze, and files and sparks came flying over from the courts. The fireman did not want me to go through the fire; he said he would go and look for my husband. I should help old Mrs Rehberg to get up the slope at the Rondell. Then, as I came back from the Voraue, the wife of the furnace feeder, Mrs Ludwig, said to me: “Your husband has been rescued! I saw him being carried out of here on a stretcher.” I believed her and stayed quiet for half an hour because I could see that people were very busy. Then I went to the police. The miss in reception said: “No, Mrs Bolte, that was not your husband; that is a mistake. I had a soldier bandaged and carried out.” Well, the fire came from the ecclesiastic offices and land-registry and my bedroom was on fire, the police pumped water up from the Fulda and defended that corner of the Renthof. That’s why the building is still standing. There was not much water in the Fulda but it was enough.
So I went back to the Voraue, where the sheds at the front of the sports ground are. There we sat. And the following morning, about half seven, I went first to the Weinberg where one of my friends lives. I was only wearing my pinny, no coat or nothing. When I got there, she was sitting in the street, on her furniture and the house was ablaze (the rear building of no. 14 – it used to belong to the Jew Stern). It was about half seven. So she sat there for eight days and slept at night in the front-building because she could not get a cart. Much was stolen anyway. Then Captain Böttiger exerted himself on her behalf so that she could leave there with her furniture and was taken to Asbach near Sooden-Allendorf; that’s where she’s from.
After a few minutes I went back to the Aue to Mrs Rehberg and brought her a piece of bread. Because a policeman had given me two pieces of bread. And then I went to the Weserspitze – the big house is my sister’s. As I got there, everything had burnt down, the whole furniture of the pub on the ground floor was on fire. No one could tell me where my sister was. The tenants were sitting in front of the door. But no one could tell me anything. So I went to Hartwigstraße where one of my nieces lives (Minotto, no. 23). The people from the ground floor flat – they were still salvaging their furniture – told me: “The upper part of the house is burnt out. We don’t know where the Minottos are.” I was always walking through the fire and the heat. From my niece’s, I went to the Wackers in Ihringshäuser Allee 27 where I had always helped out in the garden and see whether they would put me up. The house had been destroyed by a direct hit. Mr Wacker, who had tried to fight the fire, was buried beneath the house. The others had been saved. Although I was exhausted, I struggled along to my cousin in Hildebrandstraße 9 (Zickler). As I get there, she’s sitting in the street with her furniture. The teacher living opposite had offered, however, to put her up. In the meantime, it was evening. I went over Möncheberg, where everything was ablaze, to the bunker at the train station. That’s where I stayed the night. We did not have any light or water and it was very busy. That’s where I sat until the following morning when we were told: “Everyone go to the town hall!” In the town hall I was given papers for the bombed-out, a ration card and cheque for 200 marks.
I went back to the Renthof but could not get into no. 4 because the building was still burning and there was still rubble everywhere. I begged the police lieutenant Weber to have people look for my husband. “Mrs Bolte, resign yourself, your husband is no longer alive. I have to deploy my forces where we may still be able to save people who are still alive.” He thought that my husband had had a heart attack when he slumped together on the stairs. The dead from the Pinne were laid out on the lawn and they tried to resuscitate people and the injured who still showed signs of life were put into ambulances and taken away. I said: “My husband is buried under the rubble and lived and worked here for forty years; I’m staying.” I made an emergency bed for myself in the rooms of the Hitler Youth.
But during the night there was another alarm and the houses and ruins of the neighbourhood were still burning, there was smoke and crackling noises and then House Schmalkalden in Fuldagasse collapsed; that made a crash and the ecclesiastic offices also burnt and crashed. So I went to the cellar of the police station. There was no light, we just had lamps. I lay down on a bench at the back and stayed in the cellar even as the others had left. Then – oh, what a fear – something rattled and moved in the cellar. I asked: “Who is there?” No reply. After another half an hour again: “Is anyone here? This is Mrs Bolte.” No reply. So I lit a match and a big black dog was lying in the cellar. The police lieutenant Weber came – what a fright I’d had: “Mrs Bolte, this is not the right place for you. Go up into the station where it’s warm. But the dog saved our lives last night, it will stay with us.” I don’t know how. Anyway, I stayed the whole night in the police station. The following morning we were told: “A place for the homeless has been opened in Herkulesstraße. When I got there, a hundred people were already before me in the queue at the school. I asked a woman to keep my place for me: I wanted to have a look, city inspector Otto lives in the neighbourhood with his family, my niece is married to their son, and as I asked in the third house for Otto, the leader of the local women’s branch, Wack, led me in. Her husband is an inspector at the local tax office. She led me into a warm room and gave me water to wash myself and a comb to comb my hair and she gave me a shirt and also something to eat and because they did not have enough room, she organised a bed for me in the house. Because the people had a single daughter and she had to get out of her room and sleep with her parents and I should sleep in her bed. I stayed there for three nights and slept there. And then, through the upset and lack of food, I felt ill and went to the hospital in Wilhelmshöhe (the recreation home for railway employees). I thought I could recover there but my friends weren’t there anymore. So I went had a good cry in the woods and then I went to the Jacobs in Niederzwehren whom I know. I am still there and in good hands. And now I’m looking for a little suitcase to put my few things in. Because I want to travel to Celle. Kind people there have invited me to stay with them.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Auguste Bolte
Description
An account of the resource
Auguste Bolte's account of the events at Renthof 4.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-04-12
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 62
BKasselVdObmv10062
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
animal
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
home front
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mrs Auguste Müller, née Mathies, born 17 September 1878, formerly of Turmstraße 4, now of Gottsbüren no. 211, and makes the following statement:
We had been cleaning the house all day. We were expecting visitors. He was the Staff Sergeant Robert Berg. He came from Radom and had arrived barely an hour earlier when his fiancée came (he is engaged to be married); she came in and said he should come to his parents. They had just left as the alarm sounded. They were in the cellar of their building and they managed to get out there.
Then the alarm came. We took our suitcases and went across the street, I and my daughter with her child (Mrs Frieda Breindl and Inge, five years old). So we arrived in the cellar of Widersich’s building). The cellar was already full. The people from the tram came too. We were in the last room, towards Magersuppe’s building. They were three buildings, actually. We heard the hits, I can tell you that. And then we were told that Magersuppe had had the first hits. So, the men ran out, my husband and Mr Heinzerling from our building. They wanted to help fight the fire. Then they came back.
My husband came back in and was shell-shocked. I said: “What did you do with your coat?” “I don’t know.” “Where is your key?” “You needn’t ask, all doors and windows are bust.” I said: “Never mind! As long as we save our lives.” And then, they came back again and said that they would have to take the boys with them. So, everyone was asking whether their building was on fire. “No, but no. 10 is.” Then they all ran away. Then one of the boys came back: “You are already back?” They were completely dazed. Mrs Schalles, the landlady of the wine bar – she’s dead now – lived in no. 6. Her grandchild saw too that my husband had gone into our house to save stuff. Mr Heinzerling came back through the underground passage which connects our house with the Wiedersich’s cellar, underneath the street. According to what Mr Heinzerling said, the house was suddenly in flames and my husband could not get back down. He must have burnt to death somewhere upstairs. He is gone without a trace. Even when the rubble was sifted nothing could be found of him.
Now everyone started crying, Mrs Schalles included; the Frenchmen who were billeted with her tried to comfort her. It was completely dark. Someone shone a torchlight. Suddenly a tall gentleman jumped into the cellar, ran towards the emergency exit and shouted: “All the men, go outside!” But my husband was already gone. But I shouted: “First get all the women and children out!” So, he said: “you are right!” I said: “Frieda, take your child on your arm and then come quickly.” And then we had already our mouths full of smoke. You couldn’t see a thing. There was a handrail, with the children, going up the steps. But people had probably taken their luggage with them, it was all blocked up, and I said: “Frieda, quick, let’s go to our exit.” So we went back to the exit on Turmgasse. There too the stairs were full of people. There was reddish smoke. You couldn’t breathe anymore. People were screaming: “Help! Help! We are going to die here, we are going to suffocate!” And the children were screaming, it was a dreadful to-do. So I made my way up on the left, following the wall, and I said: “I have to get to the water, I have to get to the water.” The door was ajar and I said: “Why don’t they open the doors?” Answer: “He won’t let us.”
The door was only a little ajar. There was a gentleman from the tramways. He went first, and one of the people guarding the exit said: “You can’t get out. There’s phosphorous and the ack-ack’s still shooting.” I said: “But we're are allowed to suffocate.” The man from the tramways ran, jumped out and I followed him. He turned towards Königsplatz. Stones were crashing down, the overhead wires were hanging down, everything was on fire, it was as light as day. I stood in a dark corner. I ran into the dark entrance hall of the Gingerbread House opposite the garrison church. I didn’t know where to go, the whole house was on fire except the entrance hall. I saw light in the cellar. I shouted down: “Is anyone there?” A gentleman came up: “What’s that supposed to mean?” “I’m not sure?” So he went back down and kept the door shut.
The flames now came from all sides and I kept an eye on the door. There was a woman from our building who came running down the street along the buildings. That was Mrs Weber from where we lived; she wanted to get to her daughter in Mittelgasse. But everything was on fire; she could not get through. So, she said: “We can’t stay here.” “Where should we go?” “I don’t know.” The sparks were flying, and stones were dropping and flakes were swirling around us. We didn’t have lying fire [phosphorous] yet. There was a young man; I assume that he had lifted my daughter out of the emergency exit. Mrs Weber said: “Where shall we go?” “Towards Kölnische Straße.” But there too everything was on fire. So, we ran to Königsplatz, there were tram cars but soon they were also on fire. We ran from one corner on the square to the next, from the tram to the bank on the corner of Kölnische Straße, and then one up from there to the Gingerbread House. There, we went into the cellar to soak our clothes, then ran across to Wiegand, the chemist’s. They had a big hall. I found my daughter there with her child. The room was full of people. She was crying so much. I also found Mrs Schalles there. Apart from them, I did not know anyone. There was a gentleman whose family was in there; he was in uniform. He called the members of his family by their names: “Come here; I’ll guide you out but I can’t take too many in one go.” He took me, my daughter and her child with him. He guided us back to the bank building.
A soldier was sitting there with a child on his arm; he had taken the child off a woman who had several children with her. He knew the woman’s name but nothing else about her. So he sat there, with the little mite on his arm. The man in uniform said: “There will be a car to take you away.” After a while, a covered van came. It rolled for two of its lengths and then it could not go on. The men had to get out and push. But it was no use. So we ran back to the tram cars (there must have been three of them) and stayed there. The van had come from Ständeplatz and gone to Königsplatz. The people who came from there were disappointed that the van had gone that way instead of the direction of Wilhelmshöhe. A woman came and said: “Many are running towards the Aue.” But we did not know how to get there because everything around us was on fire. The whole of Karlstraße was burning, including the corner where the chemist Mons is. Then we thought to go through Königstraße to Friedrichsplatz. We just wanted to get out as I saw flames shooting out of the Ufa [cinema]. The flames shot across the street and were as long as the entrance of the Ufa was broad. And the buildings opposite were all burning and there was such a noise, people were saying: “They’re still chucking it down from above.” But it is more likely that we heard the ceilings falling down. It was gruesome on Königsplatz, the fire made a rushing sound, it was terrible. My daughter stood on the tram steps to see when she would be able to get out. Two men from the emergency services suddenly appeared and said: “We’ll come and get you in a minute.”
And they came and got us later; they wrapped the child in a blanket and me in a blanket and said: “You can’t see a thing anyway; it’s all flames.” They had to tell us when we had to jump across beams and finally they got us to Friedrichsplatz and sat us on a bench. And after a while they took us to the theatre. Many people were there already. About an hour later, it must have been towards one o’clock, a gentleman came with a van: “I will take the women and children with me. Who wants to go to Jäger Barracks?” He took us with him. And we stayed in the barracks until the morning.
Later, we looked for my husband but did not find anything. When we arrived there on foot, there were many bodies laid out on Friedrichsplatz. But I could not face trying to find my husband among them. So we went to the Schöne Aussicht where we found other people from our building and Turmgasse. So I said to my daughter: “Your father’s dead. I can feel it.” No one had seen him. And she had to cry really hard. We made our way to Oberzwehren and from there to Elgershausen. From there to Marsberg, to my son. It has been said that a body had been lying right at the entrance to Wiedersich but my son had a look and thought that this was not our Father.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Auguste Müller
Description
An account of the resource
Auguste Müller's account of the events at Turmgasse 4/Königsplatz 36 ½ (Wiedersichscher Keller), Königsplatz.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 100
BKasselVdObmv10100
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1587/26762/Wright BC.1.pdf
7e1547f91266cd6b0ec39303f249e6a3
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wright, Barry Colin
B C Wright
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-01-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wright, BC
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty-five items. Sergeant Barry Colin Wright CGM (1627924) flew an operational tour as a flight engineer on Lancaster with 103 and 166 Squadrons. The collection contains flying logbook, certificate of service and release, documents. letters, newspaper cuttings and photographs. He was badly wounded on an operation to Leipzig 19/20 February 1944.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by MD Wright and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Barry Wright’s navigator’s air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LWrightB1627924v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Munich
Poland--Szczecin
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1943-08-30
1943-09-03
1943-09-04
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-01
1943-10-02
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-18
1943-10-19
1943-10-22
1943-11-23
1943-11-24
1943-11-26
1943-11-27
1943-12-02
1943-12-03
1943-12-04
1943-12-16
1943-12-17
1943-12-20
1943-12-21
1943-12-23
1943-12-24
1944-01-05
1944-01-06
1944-01-14
1944-01-15
1944-01-20
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1944-01-23
1944-01-27
1944-01-28
1944-01-30
1944-01-31
1944-02-15
1944-02-16
1944-02-19
1944-02-20
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book for B C Wright, flight engineer, covering the period from 11 July 1943 to 29 May 1946. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF St Athan, RAF Lindholme, RAF Elsham Wolds, RAF Kirmington, RAF Hemswell, and RAF Ossington. Aircraft flown in were Halifax, Oxford, Lancaster, Tiger Moth, Wellington, and York. He flew a total of 25 night operations, 3 with 103 squadron and 22 with 166 squadron. Targets were Mönchengladbach, Berlin, Mannheim, Hannover, Hagen, Munich, Ludwigshafen, Kassel, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Stettin, Brunswick and Magdeburg. His pilot on operations was Pilot Officer Catlin.
103 Squadron
1656 HCU
166 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Me 110
Oxford
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kirmington
RAF Lindholme
RAF Ossington
RAF St Athan
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1631/26332/LHarringtonBR621165v1.1.pdf
c81074c1182019232e8e04278e82c805
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Harrington, Harry
Basil R Harrington
B R Harrington
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harrington, BR
Description
An account of the resource
30 items. The collection concerns Basil 'Harry' Harrington (621165) and contains his log book, photographs, a memoir, documents and letters. He flew B-25 on 226 Squadron and completed 43 operations as wireless operator/air gunner between September 1943 and May 1944.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Carol Marsh and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Basil 'Harry' Harrington's flying log book
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHarringtonBR621165v1
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for B A Harrington, wireless operator/air gunner, covering the period from 3 September 1943 to 15 May 1944. Detailing his operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Swanton Morley and RAF Hartford bridge. Aircraft flown in was Mitchell. He flew a total of 43 operations with 226 Squadron. Targets were Rouen, Bethune, Audinghen, Cherbourg, Montreuil, Bois de Waripel, Gueshart, Campneuseville, Pommervall, Abbeville, Pas de Calais, Beauvais, Le Groseilleir, Bois de la Tillencourt, Le Plouy Ferme, Bremen, Mons, Belville en Caux, Serqueux, Paris, Arras, Namur, Moyenville, Cambrai, Behen, Busigny, Douai, Ault, Turcoine and Charleville. His pilots on operations were Flight Sergeant Taylor, Flight Sergeant Mills and Warrant Officer White. This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Belgium--Mons
Belgium--Namur
England--Hampshire
England--Norfolk
France--Abbeville
France--Abbeville Region
France--Arras
France--Audinghen
France--Beauvais
France--Béthune
France--Cambrai
France--Cambrai Region
France--Cherbourg
France--Dieppe (Arrondissement)
France--Douai
France--Le Tréport
France--Forges-les-Eaux
France--Lisbourg
France--Montreuil
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Paris
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Pommeréval
France--Reims Region
France--Roubaix Region
France--Rouen
France--Saint-Hilaire (Allier)
Germany--Bremen
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1943-09-16
1943-09-19
1943-10-16
1943-10-20
1943-10-22
1943-10-24
1943-11-11
1943-11-19
1943-11-23
1943-11-25
1943-11-26
1943-12-14
1943-12-30
1943-12-31
1944-01-04
1944-01-05
1944-01-06
1944-01-14
1944-01-21
1944-01-24
1944-01-29
1944-02-03
1944-02-05
1944-02-06
1944-02-29
1944-03-03
1944-03-07
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-29
1944-04-30
1944-05-02
1944-05-03
1944-05-04
1944-05-07
1944-05-08
1944-05-09
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-05-15
226 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
B-25
RAF Hartford Bridge
RAF Swanton Morley
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mr Christian R. and gives the following statement:
I came home from my business at about half seven, sat down for dinner and then came the alarm. We made our way to the cellar. The suitcases with clothes and underwear were already there. My wife took our child, we put coats on, took our gas masks and then we went down. After I had brought my wife and child down, I went back to the courtyard: everything was illuminated, the searchlights were on, I made my way back down, not before time. Now the raid started. We did not feel much of it in the cellar except for the air pressure and impacts on the street of what I presumed to be canisters. As the raid was more or less finished, I made my way back up together with some other men where I saw a sea of flames. Houses had started to burn from the top and from the bottom, from both sides. In my view it was impossible to brave the streets with wife and child. We therefore decided to send the women and children through the breakthroughs towards the Lutherplatz. As some had been guided through, others came back because the breakthrough to number nine had been blocked because the house had taken a direct hit. We therefore returned to our cellar which was well equipped: the door was sealed against gas and the windows had protective panels so that it seemed safe. And everyone hoped that they could leave the cellar safely in the morning. Unfortunately, the fire came through the cellars and gas started to develop and we suffered from a lack of oxygen. In this way, 80 to 90 people first suffocated in the connected cellars and then burned to death. Only the bare skulls and some bones could be found by the rescue units.
I sat with my wife and child in a fourth cellar which was not connected to the others. There were another 20 people who died from suffocation but they did not burn. I only know that during the night, about half one, my wife started to complain about chest pains and that I gave her some valerian drops. The little seven-year old girl was sleeping. I can’t say what happened after that because I fell asleep. When I woke up again, I was in hospital in Göttingen (reserve military hospital Maria Hilf, Kirchweg?). I was there together with a neighbour from number nine by the name of Baum and a Mrs Hessler who had been visiting her parents that day in number 14 and who had also been in the cellar with us. After a few days, five or six, when I could walk again, I travelled to Kassel to find out what had happened to my family. In Kassel, I found out that my wife and child were dead. On the train to Münden, I got talking to a sergeant who explained to me that he’d come home from the front and experienced that night in Kassel. He lived in the Graben and had also lost his wife. When I explained to him my misfortune, he explained to me that on Sunday afternoon, about one, he had been looking for his sister-in-law in Moltkestraße 5. He couldn’t find her but he’d heard faint knocking from number seven. He had therefore fetched a few people so as to break open the cellar from the gateway. That’s when they got us out. Mrs Hasler who now lives Wilhelmshöher Allee 145 – 147, had been knocking. This was sergeant Heik.
My boss, the merchant August Döhne, who owns number seven, came to Moltkestraße on Saturday morning at about seven. He’d looked into the cellar where there was a great heat. He had shouted into the cellar but there was no sign of life. He consulted someone from the rescue team who said that the cellar smelled of sulphur and that therefore no one would be alive. It is possible, however, that many of our neighbours could still have been saved that Saturday morning.
Post script:
From our house the following people escaped after the raid by running through the flames to Untere Königstraße: Mr and Mrs Sieberecht, Mr Riedel with his daughter Hannelore (13), Superintendent Altekrüger and his wife and child. Mrs Altekrüger and Hannelore Riedel are dead. Mr Altekrüger is missing. The following were killed from our house: the Heinze family, Müller [?], Mr Vorsatz [?], families Scheidemann, Ries, Göpel, Mrs Osten and her daughter-in-law, Mrs Ellenberg, Mrs Wagner, Mrs Hut and her two children, the two Miss Konzes, Mrs Herbold and her two children, Olga Wächter, Rudi Theis, Mrs Koch and her child, the Hasselbach family and the Zimmer family, Mrs Hilgenberg and her two children, the widow Krümmel and widow Lorchheim, Mrs Hammacher and the boy evacuated from Cologne, Mrs Riedel and her mother.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Christian, R
Description
An account of the resource
Mr Christian's account of the events at Moltkestraße 7.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-03-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 9
BKasselVdObmv10009
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
home front
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
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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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
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Translated from the original in German: Present is Mrs Christine Wachsmuth, née Brill, born 14 October 1889, formerly of Magazinstraße 4, now of Ecken-stückerweg 37 in Harleshausen and makes the following statement:
I was sitting at the table, my husband had just come home from work. We wanted to eat but had not yet finished when the alarm came. So we got ready and went into the cellar. Well, after we had been sitting in the cellar for ten minutes, the first bombs started dropping. My husband and I were in the cellar and all the other people from the house with two little children. And then suddenly, as the bombs were dropping, there was a terrible storm and we moved into the corridor. Then one bomb dropped after the other and it went on and on. We had had our flat on the fourth floor. And every time when a bomb came we crouched and were very quiet. And we kept thinking, if only it stopped, so that we could get out again. And then my husband wanted to go up and fetch something down and as he got up, there was nothing there; it had all burnt down. It must have been a quarter to eleven when we got out of the cellar. And as we come up from the cellar, my husband said: “We have to get out.” I said: “We won’t get through.” Because everything was on fire, above and below, and we did not know where to get out.
So we went down Möncheberg down to the artillery barracks, to the watch. And then we sat there, right?, until about two, when we had to leave because everything above us was on fire – because there was a danger that the building would collapse. A soldier guided us down to the Katzensprung. He led us to the Weserspitze where the barracks are. And then we had to look for shelter, right? And then a guard came and stood there and said we should go to the horses’ stables and fetch straw and cover ourselves with it. And that’s what we did, right? And in the morning I headed off into the city and got a loaf of bread. My husband had stayed in the barracks. That morning, after I got the loaf of bread, I wanted to go to the other daughter-in-law in Hohen-torstraße and see whether they were still alive and on Pferdemarkt. But as I got up there, people said that the one-price shop was still on fire; I should go away as I wouldn’t be able to get down there. And then I did not see anyone anymore and I thought: Now they’ve been killed too. Well, and as I saw that everything was gone, I went back down to the barracks. We stayed there until midday on Saturday. And then my husband went up to the daughter-in-law in Harles-hausen. Towards evening he came back and said: “Come on, let’s go up there, Martha and children live.” There were many women there whom she had taken in now, right?.
We still live in Harleshausen with our daughter-in-law. We went back every day to look for the children. The daughter-in-law who lived at Pferdemarkt 3 (Elisabeth Wachsmuth) was burnt to a cinder in her cellar. The other one died with the three-week old grandchild in Hohentorstraße 23. And my son too. Wife and child have been found and buried but my son is still lying under the debris. I don’t know anything about him, he’s just gone. This is what happened to us. He was such a nice boy. If only we could find a lead, maybe we could dig. He had a good reputation everywhere, with his employer too. Only one man from our house is still alive because he was away at work.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Christine Wachsmuth
Description
An account of the resource
Christine Wachsmuth's account of the events at Magazinstraße 4.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-04-18
Contributor
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Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
BKasselVdObmv10071
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BKasselVdObmv10071
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
home front
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Miss Clara A., born 25 February 1901, of Heckers-häuser Straße 10, and makes the following statement:
When we heard the alarm, we grabbed our suitcases and went down to the cellar. The bombs dropped one after another, we heard them come down and explode, down at the cemetery and the open field. Luckily, we only had canisters with phosphorous in front of house and behind it. The men went up, there was a fire. They put the flames out and every ten minutes, they went back up and put them out again. On the upper floor a bed was on fire and on the second floor the floor boards but they had been there in good time so that the fire did not spread. And then came the people from further up the street and brought their beds and suitcases because everything was on fire there. The stables of the garden centre were on fire, cattle and horses perished there. And then slowly people came into our street from the whole district around the train station in the lower town and they sought refuges with us. They were all very quiet, they were mainly older people, dazed by the horror. We prepared seats in the cellar and brought bread down. We couldn’t make coffee as we did not have any water. Even the foreigners from the barracks in Holländische Straße fled to us. They were Italians. They did not stay for long. They also made the rounds with us through the house. Nothing was stolen from us. There were also some people with heart diseases and other illnesses, we had to control ourselves. When it became lighter, we noticed that everything was black with people. On the cemetery too we could see people sitting on their furniture, they’d built something there and sought refuge among the dead, for two days there was an encampment of the bombed-out from Mombachstraße. No one died there, they’d all made their way to cemetery in time. Apart from that I don’t know anything important. We were really lucky.
My sister and her husband, Dora and Fritz Weißing, visited us that evening. They left about a quarter to eight. They had to change to no 3 tram on Hedwigstraße. Then the alarm came. They had to go into the cellar of Hedwigstraße 12. And in the breakthrough to Tack, in Untere Königstraße [65], that’s were their bodies were found. During the first week I searched everywhere for them. Another tenant from the house recognised them and stated that he had talked to them. He ran with his wife and child through the flames and stayed on Lutherplatz. The four boys of my sister are soldiers, the two little ones are still at home. I live there now and look after the children, the 17-year old and the daughter of 24 (Bettenhausen, Eschenweg 10).
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Clara A
Description
An account of the resource
Miss Clara A's account of the events at Heckershäuser Straße 10 and Main Cemetery.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-03-11
Contributor
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Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Identifier
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Record 24
BKasselVdObmv10024
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
firefighting
home front
incendiary device
shelter
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
Description
An account of the resource
100 items. Translations of statements held by Stadtarchiv Kassel recorded by the Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel about the bombing of Kassel 22/23 October 1943.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mrs Clara H., née B., born 18 April 1910, formerly at her mother’s, Moltkestraße 12, now of Wilhelmshöher Allee 154 and makes the following statement:
The alarm came. I had been working at the army post office until eight. I was just about to eat but the sirens sounded already. We used to look out of the windows first to see what was happening. So I said to my mother: “We’d better go down, the sky is full of searchlights.” And just as we got down, the first bomb hit, in the Oncken factory in Jägerstraße, I’d guess, because it was close. And the people from the house were still fairly quiet and we were looking at each other because we were all black with soot because the soot came down from the chimneys and we laughed and made jokes. And then there were another three of four hits and then the breakthrough from no 14 was knocked through. And the first one to come through was the director general Gedecke. And he shouted: “For the love of God, our house is on fire and you are so quiet here!” And that’s when we stopped being quiet.
Then we knocked through the breakthrough to no. 10. The people there were all agitated. And they had already opened the breakthrough to no. 8. And as we got into no. 8, nos. 6 and 10 were on fire and we could go neither forward nor back. So I wanted to go up and have a look, and as I was halfway up the stairs, my brother and my mother shouted with one voice: “Clara, stay back!” It was a dreadful scream, I’ll never forget it. Mr Möbius, an elderly gentleman from no. 14, appeared at the stairs and he screamed: “I can’t go on!” He had two crutches. So we stayed a while longer down there and the soldiers came who said we should run down to Pferdemarkt or across to no. 7 because we could not stay where we were. Many left before us because my sister-in-law had trouble with her leg and was terribly afraid of running through the fire. My brother was half blind and had been since he was child. But I took courage and wanted to help my mother and brother across the street first and then come back to get my sister-in-law. My sister-in-law (Dina Broll) was happy with that. As we got up the stairs, the corridor leading to the cellar was ablaze. When we got to no. 7, my brother and I turned round but my mother did not see it. My sister-in-law was standing at the curb and burning beams dropped on her from above. We both screamed, my brother ran back but I could not leave my mother alone as she was completely exhausted. So went into the cellar of Moltkestraße 7. I never saw my brother and sister-in-law again.
No. 7 had three air raid cellars. Two are connected with each other, the third was separate. I knew them from before. I went with my mother in the first cellar. The corridor and the room itself were completely overcrowded; there must have been 300 or 400 people in there. The room where we sat had a shaft in the middle. The iron shaft cover was taken off and women and children used the shaft as toilet. All the men said: “Women, be quiet! We’ll get out again!” A man looked on his watch. It was half eleven. At that point we were all still alive. My mother was very agitated because my brother and sister-in-law weren’t coming. Suddenly, there was a terrible bang. We heard a terrible scream from what must have been the people in the cellar next to ours. And then everything went quiet. I don’t know anything after that. I must have passed out. I also don’t know what had happened or the names of the people in the cellar.
When I came to again, I felt as if I was lying in my bed at home. Only my legs were entangled oddly as if the mattress had dropped off and my legs had gotten in between.
Then I realised that I was in the cellar. I wanted to get up and reached around me but it was all very slippery, I kept falling back and did not know what that was. I had a torch in my coat pocket, fished it out and shone the light around me. Then I saw that I had been touching dead people. They had green faces and a thick foam at their mouths. That’s what I had been touching. Two dead people were lying across my legs; that was why I could not free them. The dead people were all lying on the floor. Only a woman and her child were still sitting against a wall. (They both had ruptured lungs.) As my head cleared, I heard wheezing. It came from a woman behind me who was wearing a fur coat or a fur jacket. I learnt later that she came from Huttenstraße where she was visiting the Baums. And from afar I heard another wheezing. And that came from my mother. I am certain because she was wearing the Persian lamb coat. I wetted the lips of both women – the water was boiling. There may have been a litre left in the air raid bucket.
I had been able to free myself, could walk about and move, only my back hurt badly. After I had closed my mother’s eyes, I wanted to get back to the woman where I had been. My torch started getting dark because I had to be careful not to trip over the bodies. When I came to the shaft, I got a terrible shock. The heavy iron cover was gone. In the shaft lay a dead woman. On the woman stood a chair and on the chair sat a man who was still alive. And that was Mr Baum from no 9. His breath was rattling dreadfully. I have no idea how he got there. My mother had also been sitting next to me and had been flung far from me. It must have been a terrible jolt. I also gave this man something to drink. He complained terribly about his back and his head. And as I turned around, I saw yet another man who was still alive. He also asked for water. Then it went quiet again because they lost consciousness.
I had already lost my shoes, through the air pressure, I assume. I also took off my coat because it was unbearably hot in the cellar. In the meantime, the woman in the fur coat had also died. There was a little space on the ground where I could lie down. I took my cardigan off and put it under my head. Because I was terribly tired. But I kept listening anyway whether I could hear steps. I can’t say for how long I had been lying there. Suddenly I could hear steps above me. They must have come from the gateway. I found a crutch and struck the iron door with it so that it would boom. But it didn’t. So I ran around in the cellar and found an iron water stopcock. And with that piece of iron I knocked against the door. There was a reply knock from above. So I lay down again on the ground. I could hear the steps leaving. But I was not afraid. A quarter of an hour later, more knocks came from above. And I knocked too. After half an hour’s work, I could hear spades and picks and another quarter of an hour later someone shouted from above: “How many people are down there?” I shouted: “Three, two men and a woman are still alive!” So they shouted: “What’s your name?” So I gave my name but they understood Kessler instead of H. So I shouted: “What’s the time?” And then I had a shock that it was Sunday morning about eleven. So I calmly lay down again.
After about three hours a sergeant came down; he must have been with the air force. He wanted to get me out first. But I demanded that they got the two unconscious men first. So they wanted to lift me and carry me out. But I could walk on my own. When I got out, however, I had to accept that they put me on a stretcher. When I lay on it, they gave me an injection in the chest. When the medical officer backed away from me, my boy stood there and said: “Oh, that’s my mum.” I was so happy. Because it had been my boy who heard the first knocking. He had run all the way to Königsplatz to get help.
I had taken my mother’s handbag and my sister-in-law’s and my own with all the papers. There was jewellery in there and 1500 RM. When the sergeant got me out, he demanded that I leave the handbags because of cadaveric poison. And so I did not even save a piece of my relatives whom I never saw again.
Then I was put on an army truck and taken to Göttingen via the motorway. I took my boy with me. The other two gentlemen came with us to Göttingen. They are both still alive. They are Mr Baum and Mr Rubenkönig.
Many people were persuaded by the soldiers to run down to the Pferdemarkt (cf. the group of children on the pile of sand). That was however a false escape route.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Clara H
Description
An account of the resource
Clara H's account of the events at Moltkestraße nos. 12 and 7.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-04-27
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harry Ziegler
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Record 74
BKasselVdObmv10074
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kassel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
fear
home front
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/759/17825/MCruickshankG629128-150428-23.1.jpg
fae17c84b8f15a9ee1bb199741752c86
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cruickshank, Gordon
G Cruickshank
Description
An account of the resource
76 items. Concerns the life and wartime career of Flight Lieutenant Gordon Cruickshank DFM who joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. After training as an air gunner he flew 52 operations on Manchester and Lancaster with 50, 560 and 44 Squadrons. Collection consists of a 1956 memoir with original photographs donated separately, a memoir of his life on squadron from December 1941, his logbooks. a further notebook with memoir, playing cards annotated with his operations, official documents, lucky mascots, medals and badges, dog tags, memorabilia, crew procedures, as well as photographs of aircraft, targets and people.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Linda Hinman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cruickshank, G
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Commemorative Plaque
Description
An account of the resource
At top - title: 'Operations, 50 44 630 Squadrons, Manchester aircraft 333 1/2 operational hours, Lancaster aircraft'.
On the left and right - RAF bases and operations carried out from them.
On the right - a map on northern Europe and United Kingdom showing routes to targets in France, Italy, Germany and Poland. At the bottom - labelled '5 Group Bomber Command 1942-1944'.
In the background fighter and other jet aircraft.
Format
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Decorative plaque with map, notes and photographs of aircraft
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Map
Photograph
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCruickshankG629128-150428-23
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
France
France--Saint-Nazaire
Netherlands
Netherlands--Ameland Island
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Rostock
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Saarlouis
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Wismar
France--Le Creusot
Italy
Italy--Genoa
Italy--Milan
Germany--Berlin
France--Clermont-Ferrand
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Nuremberg
France--Paris
Poland
Poland--Gdańsk
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Munich
France--Toulouse
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1944
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-06
1944-04-05
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
44 Squadron
5 Group
50 Squadron
630 Squadron
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of Toulouse (5/6 April 1944)
Lancaster
Manchester
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1424/28792/LRobinsonDA1215638v1.2.pdf
e308895d9d16d129b08fcf2fb24b909e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Robinson, John
J Robinson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Robinson, J
Description
An account of the resource
One item. The log book belonging to Flight Lieutenant D A Robinson (1215638 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 158 Squadron before becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Robinson and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
D A Robinson’s pilot’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot’s flying log book for D A Robinson, covering the period from 23 November 1942 to 21 May 1948. Covering his flying training, operations flown and instructor duties. It states in his log book that his previous one was lost due to enemy action but includes detail of his training establishments. He was stationed at RAF Bulawayo, RAF Mount Hampden, RAF Grantham, RAF Shawbury, RAF Condover, RAF Stradishall, RAF Wymeswold, RAF Castle Donington, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Lissett, RAF Little Rissington, RAF Wing and RAF Moreton-in-Marsh. He was a prisoner of war from 29 January 1944 to 2 May 1945. Aircraft flown in were Tiger Moth, Oxford, Wellington, Halifax, Lancaster and Anson. He flew a total of 17 operations with 158 Squadron, being reported missing on his last operation. Targets were Hamburg, Essen, Mannheim, Milan, Rheydt, Berlin, Kassel, Dusseldorf, Cannes, Ludwigshafen, Frankfurt and Magdeburg. His pilot for his first 'second dickie' operation was Flight Sergeant Williamson.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LRobinsonDA1215638v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Zimbabwe
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France--Cannes
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Rheydt
Italy--Milan
Zimbabwe--Bulawayo
Zimbabwe--Harare
Italy
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-07-29
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-07
1943-08-08
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-11
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-12-19
1943-12-20
1943-12-21
1944-01-20
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1944-01-28
1944-01-29
158 Squadron
1652 HCU
21 OTU
26 OTU
28 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Grantham
RAF Lissett
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Shawbury
RAF Stradishall
RAF Wing
RAF Wymeswold
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1217/15049/LStoreyDP1334123v1.2.pdf
9575e8b05a67237abd33f0bdb44eaf50
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Storey, David Philip
D P Storey
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns David Philip Storey DFC (1919 - 2018, 1334123, Royal Air Force) and consists of his log book, a photograph and a memoir. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith and then became an instructor at RAF Kinloss. He was promoted to flight lieutenant in September 1945.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Storey and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-01-30
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Storey, DP
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
David Storey's observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LStoreyDP1334123v1
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for David Storey, navigator, covering the period from 3 October 1942 to 6 June 1946, and from 25 June 1949 to 29 November 1952. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, instructor duties and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Wigtown, RAF Abingdon, RAF Rufforth, RAF Snaith, RAF Kinloss, RAF Westcott and RAF Panshanger. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Whitley, Halifax and Wellington. He flew a total of 30 Night operations with 51 squadron. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Morris, Sergeant Jackson and Flying Officer Love. Targets were, Krefeld, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne, Hamburg, Remscheid, Mannheim, Nuremburg, Milan, Peenemunde, Leverkusen, Berlin, Monchen Gladbach, Montlucon, Modane, Hannover, Kassel, Dusseldorf, Ludwigshaven, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Stuttgart and Lille.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Cara Walmsley
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Hertfordshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Lille
France--Modane
France--Montluçon
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Remscheid
Germany--Stuttgart
Italy--Milan
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Scotland--Kinloss
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1943-06-22
1943-06-25
1943-06-26
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-03
1943-07-04
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-22
1943-08-23
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-15
1943-09-16
1943-09-17
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-11-03
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-22
1943-11-23
1943-11-25
1943-11-26
1944-01-29
1944-02-15
1944-02-20
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-04-29
1944-04-30
10 OTU
11 OTU
1663 HCU
19 OTU
26 OTU
51 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Me 109
navigator
Operational Training Unit
promotion
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
RAF Rufforth
RAF Snaith
RAF Westcott
RAF Wigtown
RAF Wing
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1772/31069/MCleggPV[DoB]-150819-04.pdf
f455e2dd94dd4a5af08ae3e4cb11a33d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1772/31069/MCleggPV[DoB]-150819-04.pdf
f455e2dd94dd4a5af08ae3e4cb11a33d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Clegg, Peter Vernon. Aldborough Dairy and Cafe
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains advert for Mudd's choicest butter, details of Aldborough Cafe, photograph, newspaper cuttings and many pages of visitors signatures. an index of visiting Canadian and American airmen, some notes on signatures and details of the death of those signing the book.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-02
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clegg, PV
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] DETAILS OF THE DEATH OF THOSE SIGNING THE BOOK [/UNDERLINED]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 7th 1942]
Athol Herbert JENNINGS F/S RCAF Killed Aug 28th/42 408 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
408 Sqn – Hampden I – P1244 EQ-Y – Op: Kassel
Sgt A H Jennings Killed
Sgt L G Chaston RCAF Killed
Sgt C H Thompson RAAF Killed
Sgt J W Todd Killed
T/o 2005 Balderton. All are buried in Hannover War Cemetery.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 7th 1942]
Sydney Clarence CAMP Flt Sgt RCAF Killed Jan 15/42 51 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 8th 1942]
Eric John RICHARDS Sgt RAF Killed Jan 15/42 51 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
51 Sqn – Whitley V – Z9424 MH-R – Op: Emden
Sgt E J Richards Killed
Sgt H C Needham pow
F/S S C Camp RCAF Killed
Sgt G S Booth pow
Sgt W D Muirhead pow
Sgt R J White Killed
T/o 1758 Dishforth. Shot down by a night-fighter (Uffz Zipperlein, 4./NJG1) and crashed 2215 between Achtkarspelen and Rottevalle (Friesland) the latter being 4 km N of Drachten, Holland. Those who died are buried in Smallingerland (Rottevalle) Protestant Churchyard.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 8th 1942]
Roderick James CHISHOLM F/S RCAF Killed Jan 6/42 35 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
35 Sqn – Halifax II – R9439 TL-A – Op: Emden
Sgt S E Davies Killed
Sgt H Thomas Killed
P/O T J Taylor RCAF Killed
F/S R L Bradshaw RCAF Killed
F/S R J Chisholm RCAF Killed
Sgt A Squires Killed
T/o 2319 Linton-on-Ouse. Lost without trace. All are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial. Sgt Davies hailed from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 8th 1942]
Frank OLIVER DFM F/S RAF Killed Sep 30/42 51 Sqn
(No details known) [Squadron with Coastal Command, May - Oct 42]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 9th 1942]
Douglas FORBES Sgt RAF Killed Mar 8/43 61 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
61 Sqn – Lancaster I – W4903 QR-P – Op: Nürnberg
F/L C A Giles DFC RAAF Killed
P/O K D Babington-Browne Killed
F/O F Richards Killed
P/O B J Gunter Killed
F/S G Mitchell Killed
Sgt E Carr Killed
F/S D Forbes Killed
T/o 1930 Syerston. Believed crashed in the general vicinity of Fürth, a large town just to the NW of Nürnberg. All were buried at Fürth on 10 March, but since the war their bodies have been taken to Durnbach War Cemetery.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 10th 1942]
Jack Vage KERR F/S RAF Killed Oct 16/42 51 Sqn
(No details known) [Sqn with Coastal Command, May - Oct/42]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 10th 1942]
Frank Lewin LUFF Sgt RAF Killed Aug 12/42 51 Sqn
(No details known) [Sqn with Coastal Command, May - Oct/42]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 10th 1942]
Norman VINER Sgt. RAF Killed Jan 21st/42 51 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
51 Sqn – Whitley V – Z9311 MH-J– Op: Emden
P/O B Sides Killed
Sgt D A Richards Killed
F/S B L Hart Killed
Sgt N Viner Killed
Sgt J J Clarke Killed
T/o 1734 Dishforth. Lost without trace. All are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 3 – Date of entry January 13th 1942]
William Moreton JAMES Sgt RAF Killed Jul 12th/42 51 Sqn
(No details known) [Sqn with Coastal Command, May - Oct/ 42]
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 4 – Date of entry January 23rd 1942]
Stanley WOOLHOUSE W/O RAF Killed Oct 3/43 51 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
51 Sqn – Halifax II – HR728 LK-D – Op: Kassel
F/L W T Irwin Killed
F/O J A Grundy Killed
P/O W J Watson Killed
F/O J J Dawkins Killed
F/O R T Watkinson Killed
W/O S Woolhouse Killed
Sgt J Dixon Killed
Sgt J F Gordon Killed
T/o 1810 Snaith. Crashed at Wietersheim on the E bank of the Weser, 4 km SSW of Petershagen. All are buried in Rheinberg War Cemetery. F/O Grundy was an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 4 – Date of entry 27th January 1942]
Arthur Hugh Steyning BROWN P/O RAAF Killed Oct 16th/42 51 Sqn
(No details known) [Sqn with Coastal Command, May - Oct/42]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 4 – Date of entry 28th January 1942]
Douglas Ronald FREEAR Sgt RAF Killed Apr 10/42 158 Sqn
(No details known)
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 4 – Date of entry January 28th 1942]
John David William STENHOUSE F/S RAF Killed Mar 1/43 51 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 4 – Date of entry February 15th 1942]
Ronald Arthur Bertram WILLMOTT P/O RAF Killed Mar 1/43 51 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
51 Sqn – Halifax II – BB223 MH-C – Op: Berlin
F/S J D W Stenhouse Killed
Sgt C Avery Killed
Sgt W Colangelo RCAF Killed
Sgt A Beauchamp Killed
F/S R A B Willmott Killed
Sgt A Howe Killed
F/O J B Duncan Killed
T/o 1830 Snaith. Shot down by a night-fighter (Lt August Geiger, III./NJG1) and crashed 0008 Voorst (Gelderland), 5 km NW of Zutphen, Holland. All are buried in Voorst General Cemetery.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 5 – Date of entry February 20th 1942]
Alan Kenneth FARLAM W/O RAAF Killed Aug 14/43 19 OTU
[crew and operation details]
19 OTU – Anson I – N9671 XF-P – Training
W/O A K Farlam RAAF Killed
F/O H H Kirby DFC Killed
Sgt E S A Gray Killed
Sgt F J Pellatt Killed
Sgt R Brown Killed
Sgt K Ashmore Killed
T/o 1435 Kinloss for a navigation training detail. At approximately 1505, the Anson was seen diving, with both engines running at full power, from 4,000 feet and failing to recover before hitting the ground roughly a mile E of Arbroath airfield, Angus. An examination of the wreckage revealed that most of the fabric had peeled away from the starboard wing. All rest in cemeteries scattered across the United Kingdom and it seems likely that the funeral for W/O Farlam of Neutral Bay in New South Wales was arranged by relatives as he is buried in Surrey at Cheam (St. Dunstan) Churchyard, Sutton and Cheam.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 5 – Date of entry March 18th 1942]
Edward Maurice TAYLOR Sgt RAF Killed Jun 17/42 24 OTU
[crew and operation details]
24 OTU – Whitley V – BD358 – Training
F/S W T Rushton Killed
P/O L Rowlinson Killed
Sgt G E Hibben Killed
Sgt E M Taylor Killed
Sgt A F Alcock RCAF Killed
Sgt Harris inj.
LAC H G Foot Killed
AC2 J Murray Killed
T/o 1525 Honeybourne for a navigation exercise involving the crew, which was made up of a screened pilot and wireless operator, four trainees and two passengers, in overwater flying. At 1955, the bomber returned to base and was seen, while on the cross-wind leg, to lower the flaps. As it did so, so the nose appeared to rise quite sharply. Immediately, the flaps were retracted and the Whitley continued with its approach but as it turned finals, and the flaps were once again lowered, the nose pitched up and the aircraft stalled, plunging to the ground on the boundary of the airfield, where it burst into flames. Those who died rest in various cemeteries across the United Kingdom. This was the first major accident involving an aircraft from the unit since its formation in mid-March 1942.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 6 – Date of entry July 28th 1942
Roderick John HEATHER P/O RCAF Killed Mar 12/43 427 Sqn
(No details known)
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 7 – Date of entry September 18th 1942]
Thomas Donovan COPELAND F/O RCAF Killed Mar 11/45 434 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
434 Sqn – Lancaster X – KB834 WL-Y – Op: Essen
F/L R J Fern RCAF Killed
P/O W T Jones Killed
F/L A G Rowe DFC RCAF Killed
F/O T D Copeland RCAF Killed
F/O J R Latremouille RCAF Killed
F/O G Scott RCAF Killed
F/O J A H B Marceau RCAF pow
T/o 1138 Croft. Hit by flak and crashed within seconds of completing its bombing run, plunging into the target area. Six bodies were later recovered from Plot B at the Süd-West Friedhof and taken to the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery. F/O Marceau RCAF was very badly wounded and was to undergo many years of hospital treatment. Apart from 37 year old P/O Jones, who had served previously with 419 Squadron, the crew were on their second tour of operations.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 8 – Date of entry September 19th 1942]
Eric Raymond PRICE F/O RAF Killed Oct 22/43 77 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
77 Sqn – Halifax II – JD121 KN-O – Op: Kassel
F/O J S Barber Killed
Sgt D W Stribley Killed
Sgt R O Hand Killed
F/O E R Price Killed
Sgt I M Smith Killed
Sgt J Pretsell Killed
Sgt H A Weber RCAF Killed
T/o 1802 Elvington. Crashed at Tietelsen, 9 km SE of Brakel. All rest in Hannover War Cemetery.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 8 – Date of entry October 14th 1942]
Peter LANE Killed Jan 18/43 97 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
97 Sqn – Lancaster I – R5575 OF-L – Op: Berlin
Sgt G H Rowson Killed
Sgt P Lane Killed
Sgt J E West Killed
Sgt J Bell Killed
Sgt J C Brittain Killed
Sgt G A Axup Killed
F/S H C Beebe RCAF Killed
T/o 1703 Woodhall Spa. Crashed in the Waddenzee. Sgt Brittain's body was recovered on 9 April and buried a week later in Ulrum General Cemetery. The rest are named on the Runnymede Memorial. At 40, F/S Beebe RCAF was amongst the oldest RCAF airmen to die on operational service with Bomber Command.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 8 – Date of entry October 23rd 1942]
Arthur Lawrence FAIRBROTHER Sgt RAF Killed Feb 15/44 77 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
77 Sqn – Halifax V – LK726 KN-O – Op: Berlin
F/O G Bodden Killed
Sgt J L Green Killed
F/S N F W Gooding Killed
Sgt W H Beere Killed
Sgt R C Hall Killed
Sgt J Smith Killed
Sgt A L Fairbrother Killed
T/o 1730 Elvington. Crashed at Buskow, 7 km S of Neuruppin. All were buried at Buskow on 17 February, since when their remains have been exhumed and reinterred in the 1939-1945 War Cemetery at Berlin. Sgt Fairbrother's service number indicates he was accepted for pilot training in the pre-war volunteer reserve.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 8 – Date of entry November 27th 1942]
Derek VOLLANS Sgt RAF Killed Apr 15/43 425 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
425 Sqn – Wellington III – X3763 KW-L – Op: Stuttgart
P/O A T Doucette DFC RCAF Killed
Sgt A Jones Killed
P/O J O L Desroches DFC RCAF Killed
Sgt D Vollans Killed
P/O G P H Ledoux RCAF Killed
F/S P P Trudeau RCAF Killed
T/o 2107 Dishforth. Crashed at Mussey-sur-Marne (Haute Marne), on the W bank of the Marne, 8 km S of Joinville, France. All rest in Mussey-sur-Marne Communal Cemetery.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 10 – Date of entry January 17th 1943]
William ("Bill") HENDERSON P/O RCAF Killed Apr 14/45 419 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
419 Sqn – Lancaster X – KB866 VR-M – Op: Kiel
F/S C C Maclaren RCAF Killed
Sgt G A Livingston RCAF Killed
F/O D W Wincott RCAF Killed
F/O C R Loft RCAF Killed
WO1 W Henderson RCAF Killed
F/S E R Wightman RCAF Killed
Sgt G J Jones RCAF Killed
T/o 2022 Middleton St. George similarly tasked. Lost without trace. All are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial. At 36, F/S Wightman RCAF was amongst the oldest Canadians killed on bomber operations in 1945.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 12 – Date of entry February 21st 1943]
James Henry ("Smudge") EVANS F/S RCAF Killed Aug 10/43 405 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
405 Sqn – Halifax II – HR872 LQ-K – Op: Mannheim
F/L K MacG Gray RCAF Killed
Sgt D A Black RCAF Killed
F/O A J Middleton RCAF Killed
Sgt J H Evans RCAF Killed
Sgt H King Killed
Sgt C W Pickering RCAF Killed
Sgt J Hanna RCAF Killed
T/o 2252 Gransden Lodge. Shot down by a night-fighter (Lt Norbert Pietrek, II./NJG4) crashing 0100 at Awenne (Luxembourg), 9 km NW of St. Hubert, Belgium. All are buried in Florennes Communal Cemetery. F/S Gray RCAF and F/O Middleton RCAF both came from Medicine Hat in Alberta.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 12 – Date of entry February 21st 1943]
William John Ross DAVIES F/S RCAF Killed March 5/43 426 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 12 – Date of entry February 21st 1943]
Cyril Randolph TRASK P/O RCAF Killed March 5/43 426 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
426 Sqn – Wellington III – BK401 OW-M – Op: Essen
P/O C R Trask RCAF Killed
P/O C E Chapman Killed
Sgt W J R Davies RCAF Killed
SGT N F Paterson RCAF Killed
Sgt G Walen RCAF Killed
Sgt R E Williams RCAF Killed
T/o 1910 Dishforth. Lost without trace. All are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial.
Note. A reliable private source in Holland indicates this Wellington may have crashed in the IJsselmeer, 10 km E of Amsterdam.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 14 – Date of entry April 17th 1943]
Albert Frederick HOPLEY F/S RCAF Killed May 14/43 426 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
426 Sqn – Wellington X – HE697 OW- – Op: Bochum
Sgt J A Thomson RCAF Killed
Sgt A F Hopley RCAF Killed
Sgt J P O Ethier RCAF Killed
Sgt N Hudspith Killed
Sgt T F How Killed
T/o 2334 Dishforth. Shot down by a night-fighter and crashed 0253 near Nederhorst den Berg (Noord Holland), 16 km SE of Amsterdam. All are buried in Amersfoort (Oud Leusden) General Cemetery.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 13 – Date of entry March 31st 1943]
Sidney Leon MURRELL D.F.C. Flt/Lt. RCAF Killed June 22/43 405 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
405 Sqn – Halifax II – JD124 LQ-P – Op: Krefeld
F/L S L Murrell DFC RCAF Killed
Sgt A W Nichols BEM RCAF Killed
P/O F W Hodge RCAF Killed
P/O J H T J Lemieux RCAF Killed
P/O R A Livingston DFC RCAF Killed
F/S E D Rowe RCAF Killed
Sgt R L Robinson RCAF Killed
T/o 2336 Gransden Lodge. Crashed in the vicinity of Mönchengladbach, where all were laid to rest in the Städtfriedhof on 24 June. Sgt Nichols RCAF now lies in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery; the rest have been taken to Rheinberg War Cemetery. F/L Murrell RCAF was a Texan from Gainsville.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 16 – Date of entry July 3rd 1943]
John Henry STEVENS Sgt RAF Killed Oct 3/43 44 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
44 Sqn – Lancaster III – ED433 KM-V – Op: Kassel
P/O H G Norton RAAF Killed
Sgt J H Stevens Killed
Sgt S D Stait Killed
Sgt F Thompson pow
Sgt E E Greenfield Killed
Sgt W A Whalley Killed
Sgt R G Martin Killed
T/o 1831 Dunholme Lodge. Crashed in the Söhrewald, 10 km SE of Kassel. Those who died are buried in Hannover War Cemetery.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 15 – Date of entry May 7th 1943]
Donald James ELLIOTT F/O RCAF Killed Jan 1/44 405 Sqn
(No details known)
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 17 – Date of entry July 16th 1944]
Lloyd William Wesley JONES P/O RCAF Killed Jan 22/44 427 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
427 Sqn – Halifax V – LL139 ZL-D – Op: Magdeburg
S/L D M Arnot DFC RCAF Killed
W/C A N Martin RCAF Killed
P/O R A N Rondelet RCAF Killed
P/O L W W Jones RCAF Killed
F/O W V Thom RCAF pow
P/O R Dawson Killed
P/O L S Gray RCAF Killed
P/O R O Nickerson RCAF Killed
T/o 2000 Leeming. Attacked at 19,500 feet by a night-fighter while clearing the target area. The order to abandon was given, but before the crew could react, the Halifax exploded, throwing clear F/O Thom RCAF. The others are buried in Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery. W/C Martin RCAF was the CO of 424 Squadron and had been attached for operational experience. P/O Rondelet RCAF was a Belgian, born on 21 November 1915 at Seraing in the SE suburbs of Liege.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 17 – Date of entry July 24th 1944]
David Neville COTTON P/O RCAF Killed June 29/44 427 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
427 Sqn – Halifax III – LV938 ZL-A – Op: Metz
WO2 A J King RCAF pow
Sgt H Morgan pow
F/O W A Wilson RCAF pow
P/O W M Pookay RCAF evd
F/S R E Mowbray pow
F/S S K Vallieres RCAF pow
F/S D N Cotton RCAF Killed
T/o 2145 Leeming similarly tasked. Hit by flak and crashed at Juvincourt-et-Damary (Aisne) some 24 km SE of Laon. F/S Cotton RCAF is buried in Juvincourt-et-Damary Churchyard.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 18 – Date of entry August 26th 1943]
Nick VENBER P/O RCAF Killed May 1/44 420 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
420 Sqn – Halifax III – LW476 PT-J – Op: Somain
F/L E Northern DFC RCAF Killed
Sgt L S Franklin RCAF Killed
F/O F W Morrison RCAF Killed
WO1 N Venber RCAF Killed
F/S C H Lines Killed
Sgt W H Young RCAF Killed
F/O A H B Hall RCAF Killed
T/o 2115 Tholthorpe to bomb rail installations. Presumed crashed in the sea. F/O Morrison RCAF is buried in Cayeux-sur-Mer Communal Cemetery, F/O Hall RCAF rests at St-Valery-sur-Somme Communal Cemetery, while the other members of crew are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 19 – Date of entry August 27th 1943]
William Edward MARTIN Sgt RCAF Killed Dec 11/43 26 OTU
[crew and operation details]
26 OTU – Wellington III – BK440 – Training
F/S A Merridew Killed
Sgt S Wilson Killed
F/S N Doherty RAAF Killed
Sgt E W Brown Killed
Sgt W E Martin RCAF Killed
Sgt A W Ellis Killed
T/o 0645 Little Horwood for a navigation sortie. Exploded 0800, or thereabouts, and crashed near Park Farm, Hindolveston, 8 miles ESE of Fakenham in Norfolk. Five were taken to Cambridge City Cemetery, while Sgt Brown is buried in Rushden Cemetery. In the years since this tragedy, various items of debris have been recovered from the fields and the more important pieces are now with the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum at Flixton.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 23 – Date of entry January 4th 1944]
James Archibald WILSON Sgt RCAF Killed Jan 21/44 419 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
419 Sqn – Halifax II – JD466 VR-E – Op: Magdeburg
F/L A G Hermitage RCAF Killed
Sgt J A Wilson RCAF Killed
F/S R H Walton RCAF Killed
F/S W B Tobin RCAF Killed
WO2 J B Chess RCAF Killed
Sgt R Shields Killed
Sgt R W Edwards RCAF Killed
T/o 1941 Middleton St. George. Crashed at Borne, where all were buried on 26 January. Since the cessation of hostilities, their bodies have been brought to the 1939-1945 War Cemetery at Berlin.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 23 – Date of entry January 4th 1944]
James Coulter COPELAND P/O RCAF Killed Dec 6/44 429
[visitors book entry. Page No. 23 – Date of entry January 4th 1944]
William Edward Heaton BARTY P/O RAF Killed Dec 6/44 429 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 23 – Date of entry January 4th 1944]
Stephen Lawrence NOREJKO P/O RCAF Killed Dec 6/44 429 Sqn
429 – Halifax III – MZ900 AL-K – Op: Boulogne
F/O J M Prentice RCAF
F/S F P Platt
F/O T A Wilson RCAF
F/S S L Norejko RCAF
Lt F M McRoberts USAAF
F/S W E H Barty
F/S J C Copeland RCAF inj
T/o 0714 Leeming similarly tasked. Hit by flak which damaged both starboard engines. Unable to maintain height, F/O Prentice RCAF put the bomber into the sea off the French coast. F/O M Lanin RCAF in Halifax III MZ303 AL-R witnessed the ditching and he remained overhead until an ASR Walrus, escorted by two Spitfires, arrived on the scene at 1019. All were picked up, F/S Copeland RCAF being slightly injured. Overladen, the Walrus was eventually met by an HSL which took the crew in Newhaven. P.T.O. [See next entry]
[page break]
[crew and operation details]
429 Sqn – Halifax III – MZ463 AL-J – Op: Osnabruck
F/O J M Prentice RCAF Killed
F/L H D O/Neil RCAF Killed
P/O E S C Clark RCAF Killed
F/O T A Wilson RCAF Killed
P/O L Norejko RCAF Killed
Lt F M McRoberts USAAF Killed
P/O W E H Barty Killed
WO2 J C Copeland RCAF Killed
T/o 1619 Leeming. Lost without trace. The six RCAF members of crew, along with P/O Barty, are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial while Lt McRoberts USAAF is named on his country's memorial to its airmen with no known graves. It will be recalled that six of the crew had been involved in a dramatic ditching incident while operating against Boulogne in September. Apart from F/L O'Neil RCAF, who was flying his first sortie, all were about two-thirds of the way through their tour.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 23 – Date of entry January 7th 1944]
Frederick Peter CAMMAART P/O RCAF Killed Apr 23/44 424 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
424 Sqn – Halifax III – LV780 QB-M – Op: Dusseldorf
WO2 W F Vornbrock RCAF Killed
Sgt L Walters Killed
F/S J S Laird RCAF Killed
WO2 F P Cammaart RCAF Killed
Sgt L Hanson Killed
Sgt J J Renning RCAF Killed
Sgt F P Morrisey RCAF pow
T/o 2230 Skipton-on-Swale. Crashed near Goirle in Noord-Brabant, 4 km S of Tilburg, Holland. Those who died were buried in Goirle Roman Catholic Cemetery, but since 1945 the four RCAF members of crew have been taken to Bergen op Zoom Canadian War Cemetery. Sgt Walters had been born Lionel Cohen and he came from Golders Green in Middlesex.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 24 – Date of entry February 1st 1944]
William Henry PARKINSON F/O RCAF Killed May 9/44 432 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
432 Sqn – Halifax III – LW594 QO-G – Op: Haine-St-Pierre
P.O S A Hawkins RCAF Killed
Sgt H Ibbotson Killed
F/O A I Raetzen RCAF pow
Sgt M B O'Leary RCAF pow
F/O W H Parkinson RCAF Killed
Sgt G Hand evd
Sgt R B Haxton RCAF evd
T/o 0130 East Moor similarly tasked. Shot down by a night-fighter (Oblt Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer Stab IV./NJG4) and crashed 0332 at Grand Reng (Hainaut) a small Belgian town on the border with France some 16 km SE of Mons. Those who died lie in Gosselies Communal Cemetery, where all 102 graves are for airmen who died in Bomber Command service between July 1942 and May 1944.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 24 – Date of entry February 3rd 1944]
John Tengate TUNSTALL Sgt RAF Killed Jan 7/45 550 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
550 Sqn – Lancaster I – NG363 BQ-P – Op: Munchen
F/O C J Clarke RCAF Killed
Sgt J T Tunstall Killed
F/S H E Miell RCAF Killed
F/O A L Coldwell RCAF pow
Sgt L O Precieux Killed
F/S F W Bradley RCAF Killed
F/S L A J Gauthier RCAF Killed
T/o 1815 North Killingholme. Those who died rest in Dürnbach War Cemetery. Nineteen year old Sgt Precieux was the son of Jules Henri and Marie Alicia Fanellie Precieux of Phoenix on the island of Mauritius.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 25 – Date of entry February 4th 1944]
Stanley Allen HAWKINS F/O RCAF Killed May 9/44 432 Sqn
(See Page 24 et seq. for details with rest of crew)
[visitors book entry. Page No. 25 – Date of entry February 8th 1944]
Douglas Anderson HENDERSON P/O RCAF Killed Feb 21/45 427 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
427 Sqn – Halifax III – NR288 ZL-F – Op: Worms
P/O W R Wilson RCAF pow
Sgt J F W Taylor Killed
F/O L Webster RCAF Killed
WO2 R R Stuart RCAF Killed
F/S D A Henderson RCAF Killed
F/S L O Foisy RCAF Killed
F/S A J McLeod RCAF Killed
T/o 1623 Leeming. Those who lost their lives are buried in Rheinberg War Cemetery.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 26 – Date of entry February 18th 1944]
Robert Fitzgerald CONROY F/O RCAF Killed Mar 24/44 429 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
429 Sqn – Wellington X – HE593 AL- – Op: Düsseldorf
F/S R F Conroy RCAF evd
Sgt G A Leitch RCAF Killed
P/O G R Densmore RCAF Killed
F/S G A Nelson RCAF Killed
Sgt J Burns RCAF Killed
T/o 2300 East Moor. Outbound, and while climbing towards 19,000 feet, shot down by a night-fighter. Three are buried in Eindhoven (Woensel) General Cemetery; Sgt Burns RCAF lies in the Canadian War Cemetery at Groesbeek.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 27 – Date of entry February 28th 1944]
James Coulter COPELAND P/O RCAF Killed Dec 6/44 429 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
429 Sqn – Halifax III – MZ900 AL-K – Op: Boulogne
F/O J M Prentice RCAF
F/S F P Platt
F/O T A Wilson RCAF
F/S S L Norejko RCAF
Lt F M McRoberts USAAF
F/S W E H Barty
F/S J C Copeland RCAF inj
T/o 0714 Leeming similarly tasked. Hit by flak which damaged both starboard engines. Unable to maintain height, F/O Prentice RCAF put the bomber into the sea off the French coast. F/O M Lanin RCAF in Halifax III MZ303 AL-R witnessed the ditching and he remained overhead until an ASR Walrus, escorted by two Spitfires, arrived on the scene at 1019. All were picked up, F/S Copeland RCAF being slightly injured. Overladen, the Walrus was eventually met by an HSL which took the crew into Newhaven.
(Above F/S also signed the Visitors Book on an earlier page (23) on Jan 4th 1944)
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 27 – Date of entry February 29th 1944]
Robert Roy CAMPBELL F/O RCAF Killed May 13/44 419 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 27 – Date of entry February 29th 1944]
Burdel Frank EDWARDS F/O RCAF Killed May 13/44 419 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
419 Sqn – Lancaster X – KB713 VR – Op: Leuven
P/O B F Edwards RCAF Killed
Sgt J R Carruthers Killed
F/O R R Campbell RCAF Killed
P/O P Dewar RCAF Killed
P/O R S Smith RCAF Killed
P/O J A Webber RCAF Killed
P/O H E Oddan RCAF Killed
T/o 2200 Middleton St. George to bomb rail yards. Outbound, crashed and exploded at Reninge (West-Vlaanderen), 10 km SSW from Diksmuider. On 16 May, P/O Smith RCAF was buried in Coxyde Cemetery, the others lie at Adegem Canadian War Cemetery.
Note: P/O Charles SURLES is listed as having been killed the same day as F/O PRITCHARD. He must have been in the same aircraft shown here as he was in Pritchard's crew. He was an American citizen from Louisiana.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 33 – Date of entry July 12th 1944]
Gordon Featherstone PRITCHARD F/O RCAF Killed Aug 17/44 420 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 33 – Date of entry July 12th 1944]
Charles Pittman SURLES P/O RCAF Killed Aug 17/44 420 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
420 Sqn – Halifax III – MZ687 PT-L – Op: Kiel
F/O G F Pritchard RCAF Killed
P/O R H Davis RCAF Killed
Sgt E A J Proud pow
F/O F W Moffit RCAF Killed
F/O D I Block RCAF Killed
WO2 D B H Lorenz RCAF Killed
F/S K G Boucock RCAF Killed
F/O A G Roski RCAF Killed
T/o 2101 Tholthorpe. Crashed in the North Sea from where Sgt Proud was rescued two days later. Of his seven comrades, F/O Moffit RCAF and WO2 Lorenz RCAF are buried in Kiel War Cemetery while the rest have no known graves.
Note: P/O Charles SURLES is listed as having been killed the same day as F/O PRITCHARD. He must have been in the same aircraft shown here, as he was in Pritchard's crew. He was an American citizen from Louisiana.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 34 – Date of entry August 11th 1944]
J P ("Benny") BENOIT WO2 RCAF Baled out Aug 3/44 433 Sqn. Survived.
[crew and operation details]
433 Sqn – Halifax III – HX275 BM-S – Op: Bois de Cassan
F/O R H Simpson RCAF
Sgt W Purdie
F/O R Woodhouse RCAF
F/O C M Dandy RCAF inj
WO2 J P Benoit RCAF
Sgt R E Budd RCAF
Sgt O M Brown RCAF
T/o 1031 Skipton-on-Swale similarly tasked. Hit by flak while turning from the target area, F/O Dandy RCAF being slightly wounded. The flying controls were badly damaged and at 1440 the crew baled out, no further injuries being reported.
Note: "Benny" BENOIT from Toronto, calls himself "The Parachute Kid" – for good reason! Where he landed is not known.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 37 – Date of entry September 19th 1944]
Thomas Abercromby WILSON F/O RCAF Killed Dec 6/44 429 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
429 Sqn – Halifax III MZ463 AL-J – Op: Osnabruck
F/O J M Prentice RCAF Killed
F/L H D O'Neil RCAF Killed
P/O E S C Clark RCAF Killed
F/O T A Wilson RCAF Killed
P/O S L Norejko RCAF Killed
Lt F M McRoberts USAAF Killed
P/O W E H Barty Killed
WO2 J C Copeland RCAF Killed
T/o 1619 Leeming. Lost without trace. The six RCAF members of crew, along with P/O Barty, are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial while Lt McRoberts USAAF is named on his country's memorial to its airmen with no known graves. It will be recalled that six of the crew had been involved in a dramatic ditching incident while operating against Boulogne in September. Apart from F/L O/Neil RCAF, who was flying his first sortie, all were about two-thirds of the way through their tour.
Note: F/O Wilson was in the same aircraft that included the three other crew members that appear on Page 23 previously (and Page 27)
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 38 – Date of entry October 25th 1944]
William ("Bill") Gordon McLEOD F/O RCAF Killed Apr 10/45 433 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
433 Sqn – Lancaster I – PB903 BM-F – Op: Leipzig
F/O R J Grisdale RCAF Killed
Sgt W A J Thurston Killed
F/O I B Zierler RCAF Killed
F/O W G McLeod RCAF Killed
F/S J M Hirak RCAF Killed
F/S F G Seeley RCAF Killed
F/S D W Roberts RCAF Killed
T/o 1317 Skipton-on-Swale similarly tasked. Hit by predicted flak just short of the AP. A fire was seen to break out in the starboard inner engine, though the flames were soon quelled. Height was lost, followed by a small explosion which turned the Lancaster onto its back. Diving steeply, the bomber hit the ground and exploded. All are buried in Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery.
[visitors book entry. Page No. 38 – Date of entry October 25th 1944]
Ernest ("Bill") William WATSON F/L RCAF Killed Jan 16/45 420 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 38 – Date of entry October 25th 1944]
Quan Jil LOUIE F/O RCAF Killed Jan 16th 45 420 Sqn
420 Sqn – Halifax III – NA192 PT-Q – Op: Magdeburg
F/L E W Watson RCAF Killed
Sgt A K Parker Killed
P/O C W Way DFC Killed
F/O Q J Louie FCAF Killed
P/O W J D Partridge RCAF Killed
F/S D J Jacobi RCAF pow
F/S T Lynch RCAF pow
T/o 1846 Tholthorpe. Those who died are buried in Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery. F/O Louie RCAF, for whom no details of his next-of-kin are known, had the unusual Christian names of Quan Jil. P/O Partridge RCAF was the son of the Revd A M Partridge of Napanee, Ontario.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 38 – Date of entry October 31st 1944]
Sydney Dolton HEWSON F/O RCAF Killed Dec 28/44 428 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 38 – Date of entry October 31st 1944]
Robert Allan EBBER F/O RCAF Killed Dec 28/44 428 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 38 – Date of entry October 31st 1944]
Arthur Allen DIXON F/O RCAF Killed Dec 28/44 428 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 38 – Date of entry November 2nd 1944]
Albert Thomas LE BLANC F/O RCAF Killed Dec 28/44 428 Sqn
[visitors book entry. Page No. 38 – Date of entry November 2nd 1944]
Keith Oscar McDIVITT F/O RCAF Killed Dec 28/44 428 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
428 Sqn – Lancaster X – KB798 NA-G – Op: Opladen
F/O E W Page RCAF Killed
Sgt G F Owen Killed
F/O S D Hewson RCAF Killed
F/O A A Dixon RCAF Killed
F/O R A Ebber RCAF Killed
F/O K O McDivitt RCAF Killed
F/O A T le Blanc RCAF Killed
T/o 0300 Middleton St. George. All are buried in Rheinberg War Cemetery.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 40 – Date of entry December 17th 1944]
John STREET P/O RCAF Killed Mar 2/45 408 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
408 Sqn – Halifax VII – RG472 EQ-T – Op: Koln
F/O H R Sproule RCAF pow
Sgt A D Dennis RCAF pow
F/O J E Moran RCAF pow
F/O V D J Mousseau RCAF pow
F/S J G Paxton RCAF Killed
F/S J Street RCAF Killed
F/S V T Hunt RCAF pow
T/o 0721 Linton-on-Ouse. Homebound, when hit by flak which killed F/S Paxton RCAF and F/S Street RCAF. The other members of crew baled out just moments before their aircraft exploded and fell near Bad Godesberg on the W bank of the Rhine, SE of Bonn. The two airmen who died were first buried at Bad Godesberg, since when their remains have been taken to Belgium and interred in Hotton War Cemetery.
[page break]
[visitors book entry. Page No. 42 – Date of entry January 23rd 1945]
Harold Keith STINSON, D.F.C. Sqd/Ldr. R.C.A.F. Killed Feb 1/45 433 Sqn
[crew and operation details]
433 Sqn – Lancaster I – NG460 BM-A – Op: Ludwigshafen
S/L H K Stinson DFC RCAF Killed
P/O E H Thompson Killed
F/O D J McMillan RCAF Killed
F/O A W Belles RCAF
P/O J T McShane RCAF Killed
P/O R Pierson RCAF Killed
P/O R J Thompson RCAF
T/o 1523 Skipton-on-Swale. Bombed the AP at 1928 from 17,000 feet and was hit by flak. On return the Lancaster entered turbulent weather while in cloud and control was lost, two of the crew managing to bale out from 2,000 feet before their aircraft crashed near Low House, roughly 1,000 yards NW from the town of Driffield, Yorkshire. The four RCAF officers are buried in Harrogate (Stonefall) Cemetery; P/O Thompson rests in Hampstead Cemetery, Cricklewood.
Note. These were the first casualties sustained by 433 Squadron in 1945 and it was also their first Lancaster write off. Three more would be lost before the end of the war, from which not one man survived.
[Source of information: Bill Chorley's 'Bomber Command Losses' Volume 3]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Details of death of those signing the book
Description
An account of the resource
Listing by page of visitors' book of personnel who had signed and were subsequently killed with details.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany
Germany--Kassel
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Nuremberg
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
England--Worcestershire
England--Durham (County)
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Kiel
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Mannheim
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Magdeburg
France
France--Metz
England--Buckinghamshire
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Munich
Belgium
Belgium--Haine-Saint-Pierre
Germany--Worms
Belgium--Louvain
France--L'Isle-Adam
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Netherlands--Zutphen
Netherlands
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Mussey-sur-Marne
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-08-28
1942-01-15
1942-06-06
1942-09-30
1942-03-08
1943-05-08
1943-05-09
1942-10-16
1942-08-12
1942-07-12
1943-03-08
1942-10-16
1942-08-12
1942-01-21
1943-10-03
1943-10-03
1942-10-16
1942-04-10
1943-03-01
1943-03-02
1943-08-14
1942-06-17
1943-03-12
1945-03-11
1943-10-22
1943-01-18
1944-02-15
1944-02-16
1943-04-14
1943-04-15
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-03-05
1943-03-06
1943-05-13
1943-05-14
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1944-01-01
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1944-06-28
1944-06-29
1944-04-30
1944-05-01
1943-12-11
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1944-12-06
1944-09-17
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-05-08
1944-05-09
1945-01-07
1945-01-08
1944-05-09
1945-02-21
1945-02-22
1944-03-24
1944-03-25
1944-12-06
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-08-16
1944-08-17
1944-08-03
1944-12-07
1945-04-10
1945-01-16
1945-01-17
1944-12-26
1944-10-31
1944-11-02
1944-12-27
1944-12-28
1945-03-02
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Twenty-eight page printed document with handwritten annotation
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Identifier
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MCleggPV[DoB]-150819-04
Contributor
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David Bloomfield
Rights
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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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
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PV Clegg
158 Squadron
19 OTU
26 OTU
35 Squadron
405 Squadron
408 Squadron
419 Squadron
420 Squadron
424 Squadron
425 Squadron
426 Squadron
427 Squadron
428 Squadron
429 Squadron
432 Squadron
433 Squadron
434 Squadron
44 Squadron
51 Squadron
550 Squadron
61 Squadron
77 Squadron
97 Squadron
Anson
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
Halifax
Hampden
killed in action
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
RAF Balderton
RAF Croft
RAF Dishforth
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF East Moor
RAF Elvington
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Kinloss
RAF Leeming
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Little Horwood
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Middleton St George
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Skipton on Swale
RAF Snaith
RAF Syerston
RAF Tholthorpe
RAF Woodhall Spa
training
Whitley