Every year at this time we remember the Pathfinder crews lost due to fog and low cloud on Black Thursday, 16/17 December 1943. The Pathfinder dead for fog-related crashes were two from 83 Squadron, six from 156 Squadron, fourteen from 405 Squadron, and twenty-eight from 97 Squadron, fifty men in all.

The survivors of these crashes were sometimes critically injured, but there were also those who suffered only minor abrasions and shock. The severity of the shock cannot be underestimated as the Nairn account below shows us.

Bad weather was, unfortunately, very frequent in the UK during the winter months that the Battle of Berlin took place. (See also Meteorology and the Pathfinders). Amongst those involved in a bad-weather crash one month after Black Thursday was a young Canadian airman, Ross Bell Nairn. Although he was not a Pathfinder at the time (he was flying with 427 Squadron but would shortly move to 405 Squadron, PFF), detailed accounts such as his of a UK crash after a Battle of Berlin operation are exceedingly rare; they thus provide a considerable insight into the experiences of the survivors of Black Thursday.

Moreover, Nairn’s account has uncanny parallels with the loss, in the early hours of the morning of 17 December 1943, of the 97 Squadron Lancaster K-King, JB176, in which the wireless operator survived and was rescued by the gunner and one other man. That gunner was Leslie Laver, and although he himself left no written account, we can guess something of what he went through from Nairn’s testimony.

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The following account is from Claudia Fox Reppen’s webpage on Ross Bell Nairn, see the end of this article.

Only one month after Black Thursday, after an attack on Berlin on the night of 20/21 January 1944, the Halifax bomber in which Nairn was flying ran out of fuel over England and crashed. On 30 January, he wrote to his mother to describe his ordeal:

Dear Mother,

It has been the worst week I have ever put in, in my life. I went and saw the wreck in daylight, an awful mess, still don’t know how I got out of it as lucky as I did. We took off about fifteen trees before we hit the ground. I wasn’t even knocked out, except maybe for a few seconds, then I got partly out as it was all burning, before I got right out of it I heard the wireless operator yelling so I went back for him. He was lying in the fire, with his hands badly burned. I don’t know how I did it but got him on my shoulders and carried him out of it and about 50 yards away. The navigator was the only one killed instantly, the rest died since. They nearly all had fractured skulls and broken backs. Most of them would never have walked again. For about three days after I was just shaking like a leaf. In fact I still haven’t gotten over it yet. I have been running all over England to see their relatives and I managed to get to two of their funerals. The bomb aimer died since, that makes four of the crew gone. My left knee and back is still a bit sore. I went to the hospital and saw the wireless operator, he is going to be alright. I didn’t mind being shot up or even having to bail out but when you crash into the ground like that it’s just about enough to put a fellow off flying for life. I haven’t had much sleep in the last week, I think I had better hit the hay now. So long.

Love Ross

Soon afterwards he would tell his mother:

I just got back yesterday morning from a funeral, we had another crash here, the whole crew being killed, so me being a spare gunner now they pick on us for jobs like that. Three of us had to go to one of their funerals. Always try to have someone representing the squadron at any funerals. [1]

A detailed webpage by Claudia Fox Reppen tells the full tragic story of what happened to Ross Bell Nairn. Follow this link: Buried in Uncertainty: A Vanished Airman, a War Crime, and the Forgotten Mystery that Remains

With many thanks to Claudia Fox Reppen for her help with this article.

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[1] Stevens, J. R., Dead Men Flying: Travelling with the Lost in Bomber Command (Lake Superior Art Gallery, 2013) p. 51.