KB782 - Luftkriegsarchiv Köln

During the attack on Düsseldorf, the bomber fleet was attacked by German night fighters. The Lancaster X, KB782 was fired upon and hit by Lt Heinz-Joachim Schlage of Stab IV/NJG 1. The aircraft caught fire and the crew was ordered to abandon the aircraft by parachute.

The Lancaster crashed with a full bomb load in Solingen in a residential area on the corner of Frankenstrasse and Beringstrasse and exploded. Ten houses were completely destroyed and over 40 damaged. Eleven civilians died and 31 were injured. The pilot Jack Holtze, Leslie Ruhl and Joseph Bachant could only be recovered dead from the wreckage, the rest of the crew were able to save themselves by parachute and were captured on the ground and taken to the town hall in Solingen.

During the night of 4 to 5 November, Solingen suffered a heavy air raid. On the morning of 5 November, when the clearing work was still in full swing and several houses were still burning, the four prisoners were to be taken to Düsseldorf by an air force unit. They were taken from the town hall and brought to a lorry parked nearby. When people on the street noticed this, the prisoners were insulted and stones were thrown at them, some men pulled out their pistols and started shooting. At the end of this riot, four dead soldiers lay in the street.

After the end of the war, a trial began in Hamburg in May 1947 against four German nationals, including an SA-Sturmführer and a Wehrmacht soldier. It was very difficult for the court to establish the exact circumstances of the war crime against the four soldiers and to prove that each of the accused had been killed.

After taking evidence and hearing many eyewitnesses, the court passed judgement:

SA-Sturmführer Erich Lilinski was sentenced to death by hanging. However, he was reprieved to 20 years in prison, of which he only served just under 10 years, and was released from the British prison in Werl in 1957.

The second main defendant, Fritz Lomberg, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and also released in 1957.

The entire crew of KB782 were buried in the Catholic cemetery in Solingen and exhumed in June 1948 and laid to rest in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery.