No. 300 Masovian Squadron is stationed at Faldingworth Air Base in the county of Lincolnshire. Set up in 1940, the unit consists of Polish fighter pilots who escaped their country after it was occupied by the Germans. For their mission in the night of 28 May 1944, the six Lancasters of No. 300 Masovian each carry six tons of bombs. One of the aircraft is the BH-P with serial number DV282. On board are eight crew members.
In the early morning of 10 May 1940 - a week after his 29th birthday - sergeant (Uffz) Otto Dieren takes place behind the controls of his Ju-52, the Luftwaffe’s workhorse. With eleven other aircraft of the Fourth Group of ‘Kampf Geschwader 1 zur besonderen Verwendung’ (IV/KG zb V 1), Dieren flies from his home base of Liegnitz to Dordrecht, where the ‘Fallschirmjäger’ (paratroopers) in the planes have to come into action. Read the whole story in Dutch
The Bristol Blenheim Mk. IV, number L9245 - with crew members P/O Alban Thomas, L/A Leslie Jordan and Obs Penry Thomas - took off from Rosières-en-Santerre in Picardy on 10 May 1940. Around noon, while flying over the Betuwe region, they were ambushed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109 of Leutnant Emmerich Fluder of 5./JG 27 in the skies above Tiel. After a fierce gun fight the aircraft came crashing down with a thunderous blow at 12:08 pm, ending up halfway on the banks of the river Linge near the café on Vogelenzangsebrug, a bridge in Echteld. Read the whole story in Dutch
It was the 12th of May 1940 around 7:30 pm when 1st sergeant/pilot Gerd Roeloffzen and observer/reserve sergeant Hans Holtz and their Fokker C.V-D with number 592 were shot out of the sky by German fighter planes. An emergency landing brought the plane to the ground just in front of the Dutch lines, at the farm De Keij. Photo: The Fokker C.V-D with number 592 in better days
On 18 June 1940, a British Whitley Mk. V N1463 GE-L bomber crashed in the Redichemse Waard north of Culemborg. The Whitley bomber had taken off from the Linton-on-Ouse base in Yorkshire and participated in an attack on industrial sites in Gelsenkirchen. The aircraft had five crew members. They were pilot and commander Gordon James Ford, observer-navigator-bomb aimer Eric Jones-Roberts, 2nd pilot H.R. Maguire and wireless operators A.E. Furze and F.S. Staley (1920-1965). Read the whole story in Dutch
