Talk:Handley Page Halifax
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[edit] Interesting Halifax Story
Our Incredible Escape
Halifax Heavy Bomber No. LW 337 F, known to us at 102 Squadron, Pocklington, Yorkshire as ‘Old Flo’, was similar to the Halifax Mk 2 Series 1a, shown above. She ended her ‘days’ on the night of 20 January 1944, after we had dropped our bombs (using H2S radar techniques) from 18000 ft. over the centre of Berlin. It was the most heavily defended German city, with huge ack-ack flak towers, and was surrounded by ack-ack batteries and nightfighter stations.
We were shot down by ace German nightfighter pilot Hptm L. Fellerer in a Messerschmitt Bf 110 G4. Using radar aids, he flew beneath ‘Old Flo’, out of sight, and with upward firing cannon, fired into our starboard wing fuel tanks. (Fellerer shot down five aircraft that night and had clocked up 41 victories by the end of the war. He was awarded the Knight’s Cross).
‘Old Flo’ caught fire from wing to wing, with over 1000 gallons of fuel still in her tanks. At 17000ft, she went into a spiral dive, and then blew up only hundreds of feet from the ground.
Of our crew of eight, four survived, all of us having had remarkable escapes, sustaining just a few cuts and sprains. Seconds before the spiral dive, navigator Reg Wilson and bomb-aimer Laurie Underwood, having kicked out the jammed escape hatch, baled out at 17 - 18000 ft. into the upcoming flak and tracer of Berlin. A minute or so later, the pilot George Griffiths and rear gunner John Bushell were blown out when Old Flo’ exploded - both were in free fall but sufficiently conscious to be able to open their parachutes fully, before they hit the ground.
The débris of ‘Old Flo’ fell onto waste ground near the river, at Oberspree, in Berlin. Laurie, George and John were lucky enough to be caught by the military, and Reg by the civil police, and thus we were not exposed to the potential wrath of the local civilian population! We all spent the rest of the war as POWs.
Of those killed, 2nd pilot K.Stanbridge and wireless operator E.Church, (who had helped to kick out the escape hatch, but who had had no time to bale out himself!) are buried in the Berlin 1939-45 War Cemetery. Mid-upper gunner C.Dupueis, (who, to no avail, had always carried a rabbit’s foot as a good luck charm) and flight engineer L.Bremner, are remembered on the RAF War Memorial at Runnymede, as they have no known graves.
102 Squadron had 15 aircraft involved in the Berlin raid that night, of which 7 were lost. It was the Squadron’s greatest single loss, of all the bombing raids it carried out in both World Wars.
Precise details about Hptm.L. Fellerer and ‘Old Flo’s’ crash site were obtained from German archive records.
The above was added by 194.217.194.138. I don't know where it came from or it's copyright status, but it is interesting... -Lommer | talk 22:26, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Indeed. It would be nice to have more information about the author. -Mmartins 1 July 2005 12:23 (UTC)
A mostly-intact Halifax was salvaged from the bottom of Lake Mjosa in Norway in 1995. It is currently undergoing restorations and will be displayed in a museum at CFB Trenton. See the Halifax Restoration Project and Halifax Association for more details.
