What a difference six days made! Less than a week after the last Pathfinder operations of the war – the Mosquito attacks on Kiel, and on the airfields in the Kiel and Lubeck area – Pathfinder Lancasters were back using the airfield at Lubeck to collect and bring home prisoners of war.

This was part of what was known as Operation Exodus. As the end of the war had approached, Bomber Command Lancasters had begun flying to Brussels and other liberated European airfields to collect freed prisoners of war. American aircraft of the USAAF also brought back ex-prisoners.

On 9 May 1945, one of the Pathfinder aircraft flying on Operation Exodus was that of Flying Officer Coombes, with his flight engineer Bill Lapthorn; the crew were from 582 Squadron.

Thought to be Coombes, from the 582 Squadron end of the war photograph.

Bill Lapthorn

Amongst Bill’s photos is this very fine one of returning POWs, grinning cheerfully, in all states of bizarre clothing. They are standing in front of a 582 Squadron Lancaster – its code ’60-H’ identifies it as being Coombes’s aircraft. Although he looks almost as scruffy as the POWs, it is likely that it is Coombes himself who is third from the right, whilst Bill is crouched down in the very centre of the front row, to his left  another crew member whose name is not known. 

In the immediate foreground are some of the ex-POWs’ meagre possessions, including a bed roll.

“My brother just told me another story that Dad liked to share. On the day they went to Lubeck to collect PoWs, he apparently requisitioned all the newspapers that were destined for officers and instead gave them to the PoWs! I guess some had not seen UK papers for years.”

ROGER LAPTHORN, May 2020.

Bill Lapthorn logbook and photographs: courtesy of Roger Lapthorn.