NF915
Crashes > of the R.A.F.
While returning from a bombing raid on Hangelar airfield near Bonn, the Lancaster I, NF915 was attacked and set on fire by the night fighter Hptm. Werner Baake from Stab 1/ NJG 1. Burning, the aircraft crashed on the outskirts of Grevenbroich into the field of the farmer Flass, exploded on impact and burned out completely for several hours. The wreckage of the aircraft was covered with several lorry loads of earth and left in the impact crater. It was not until February 1946 that the wreckage was uncovered, examined and removed on the orders of an investigating officer.
Three crew members were able to save themselves by parachute and were taken prisoner of war by the Germans, some of them injured. Four crew members died in the crash, two of them were buried in the cemetery in Grevenbroich and exhumed in 1946 and laid to rest in the Reichswald Forest British Cemetery.
The bodies of Fl/O William Paterson and the pilot, Fl/Lt Robert Nelson Perdue, were buried in the immediate vicinity of the crash site in farmer Flass's field. It was not until December 1948 that they were exhumed and reburied in Rheinberg British Cemetery.
Above:
The crash site of the Lancaster I, NF915
centre:
left: Pilot Flight Lieutenant Robert Nelson Perdue of the Royal Canadien Air Force
right: Navigator Flying Officer William Patterson of the Royal Canadien Air Force
below:
The first burial site of Patterson and Perdue