83 Squadron, heavy bombers
Leo Janssen writes: Boxmeer is located in the province of North Brabant, Netherlands, in the upper south-east of the country. Our group researching airplane crashes and emergency landings in the Second World War in the region around Boxmeer began some 10 years ago. Before that time many individual researchers were […]
A very fine monument to the Rickinson crew was recently unveiled at Eemnes, a small village in the centre of the Netherlands. The Rickinson crew of 83 Squadron, stationed at RAF Wyton, were lost on the Duisburg operation of 12/13 May 1943. The crew were: Pilot: F/Lt Leslie Arthur Rickinson, […]
Today is the anniversary of the famous Operation Chastise, the raid on the German dams by Guy Gibson’s 617 Squadron, which took place on the night of 16/17 May 1943. To mark the anniversary, we are publishing an article by Clive Smith, 106 Squadron Researcher: FROM GIBSON’S 106 SQUADRON TO […]
It has now been confirmed that the Black Thursday memorial stone will be put in place at RAF Wyton on a permanent basis. John Clifford, one of our trustees and senior curator at the Pathfinder Collection, Heritage Centre, RAF Wyton, wrote to me yesterday: We await the construction of a […]
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. Memorial stone for the heavy losses suffered by 97 […]
The Pathfinders suffered heavy losses during the fourth week of June 1943. Amongst the crews who lost their lives were the crew of Maurice Edgar Rust. The crew were on a bombing operation against Mulheim on the night of 22/23 June; they crashed in the target area and all were […]
This detail from a photograph shows part of the funeral procession for 405 Squadron members, mostly Canadians, who were buried on 22 December 1943 at Cambridge City Cemetery. At the rear are Bill Bessent (nearest the camera) whose twin brother Bob was amongst those killed, and the one surviving uninjured […]
A question which comes up perennially about the Pathfinders is why some of them were flying with 5 Group as opposed to 8 Group (as the Pathfinders had become in early 1943) and why they continued to be awarded PFF badges and certificates. This page provides the answer: PFF Squadrons […]
In the earliest days of the Pathfinders, the PFF had a Staff Officer contingent of only five, of whom William Anderson was one. Another was Robert Murray Buchan, the Navigation Staff Officer. Sadly, Buchan went missing on 25 August with an 83 Squadron crew, a mere ten days after the PFF was […]
An unusual photograph of trainee aircrew leaving their homeland: RNZAF Boys on Ship to Canada
John Searby (left, with Bennett in 1944, IWM: CH 20628) was one of the best known and most revered of the Pathfinder squadron and station commanders. According to the dates in Bennett’s book Pathfinder, he was: CO of 83 Squadron from 9 May 1943 until 2 November 1943 Station Commander […]
On 11 February 1942, the prestigious German battleships the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau and the Prinz Eugen broke out of the westerly French port of Brest and sailed east, up the English Channel, in a break for the security of the German-controlled waters beyond it. Amongst the RAF aircraft scrambled to attack […]