MZ288 - Luftkriegsarchiv Köln

On the afternoon of November 30, 576 bombers took off to attack Duisburg. Among them was the Halifax BIII / MZ288 of the 429th Sqd, which took off from Leeming airfield in England at 16:31.

During the approach to the target area, the aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed near Elsdorf with the full bomb load of sixteen 200 kg bombs. All crew members, with the exception of one Canadian, were killed in the crash.

The data on this crash is very sparse. It is not clear whether the dead were recovered and in which cemetery they were buried. All of them only received a memorial plaque in the Runnymede Memorial Cemetery after the war. The exact location of the Halifax crash is also unknown.

This may also be due to the fact that the town of Elsdorf was heavily bombed the day before the crash, killing 62 inhabitants. In this chaos, it is very possible that the crash of the MZ288 simply disappeared and was not documented.