P4372
Crashes > of the R.A.F.
The Hampden I , P4372 was fired upon by flak on its way to bomb Gelsenkirchen. The crew then abandoned the aircraft by parachute jump. Two of the crew drifted across the Rhine and landed at Porz and Porz-Wahn, where they were arrested and became German prisoners of war.
Another crew member landed in Porz-Lind at the Linder Bruch. He took refuge in the cellar of the house at Linder Mauspfad 44, where the farmer Josef Thelen lived, and hid there for the night. When his son entered the cellar the next morning, he encountered the British soldier and called the nearby guard. German soldiers picked up the British airman and took him by tram to the main police station in Wahnheide. He is fondly remembered for offering a cigarette to the conductor of the tram.
The pilot, Pilot Officer Cedric Owen Dunkels, was severely injured in the hip by flak fragments and was taken to St.Josefs-Hospital in Porz-Wahn, where he died of his injuries at 01:20 on the same day. He was buried in the Catholic Cemetery in Wahn and exhumed on 12.11.1947 and laid to rest in Rheinberg Cemetery.
The pilotless aircraft crashed on fire at about 11:20 p.m. on the left bank of the Rhine over the village of Sürth between the SÜRTH machine factory and Hammerschmidtstrasse. There was a violent explosion during the crash, which threw larger parts of the aircraft into the vicinity of the houses in Hammerschmidtstr.