RA508

Crashes > of the R.A.F.

The whereabouts of the Lancaster RA508 were unknown for 80 years and the Royal Air Force assumed that it had crashed at some point in the North Sea. Only now has it been possible to determine the actual crash site with 99.9% certainty. With the help of colleagues from Germany and England, I have succeeded in unravelling the mystery of the RA508.

My special thanks go to Marc Hall, John Fricker, Keith Bunn and Lynda Graham, all from the UK, Jim Cave from Canada, Traugott Vitz from Germany and many others who helped put the pieces of the puzzle together. I would also like to thank Mr Lutz Aldermann from Radevormwald, who was very helpful in locating the crash site.Thanks also to the surviving relatives of the crew who helped me find information.

But first things first:

On the morning of 12 March 1945, 1,108 R.A.F. bombers take off to attack Dortmund. It was to be the last major attack on the industrial city in the Ruhr region. The American forces had already captured the left bank of the Rhine in Cologne on 7 March, while the German Wehrmacht was pressed further and further together on the right bank of the Rhine and squeezed into the so-called "Ruhrkessel". Only here was the British bomber force still threatened by German anti-aircraft guns; the German air force was almost ineffective due to a lack of fuel and ammunition. Bomber Command therefore assumed that the attack would be relatively quiet and trouble-free.

One of the aircraft involved in the attack was the Lancaster RA508 of the 106th Sqd, which had taken off from Metheringham at around 13:30. The approach was quite relaxed for the crew up to the height of Cologne, until it was most probably hit by anti-aircraft fire between Cologne and Düsseldorf.

The aircraft caught fire and veered to the right out of the bomber formation. Losing more and more altitude, it flew over Remscheid and Lennep towards Radevormwald.

Coming from the direction of Vorm Holte, it grazed the roof of a farm in Ülfe I and crashed behind it in an explosion on a meadow. The debris scattered over a radius of several hundred metres and burned for several hours. According to eyewitness reports, the crew only found mangled and burnt parts. Civilians recovered the body parts, placed them in a wooden box and buried them in a nearby bomb crater. However, the exact burial site was never documented and can no longer be determined today. As a result, the remains were never recovered and are most likely still there today.

Soon after the end of the war, the crater was completely filled in and a temporary road was built over it. The R.A.F. did not investigate, as there were only two losses suffered by Bomber Command that day: RA 508, which allegedly crashed over the North Sea, and PB187, which was confirmed to have crashed into a tram depot in Duisburg. So there was no reason to investigate at all...

Top left:

the route of the bomber stream towards Dortmund and the RA508 heading towards Radevormwald.

Top right:

the approach of the burning RA508 to Ülfe I and the impact point.

Bottom left:

An aerial view of the impact point. Photo from around 1957

bottom right:

The now built-up crash area today in 2024.

And so the years passed and the crash in Radevormwald was forgotten. In the mid-1990s, however, former teacher Friedhelm Brack remembered the events of the war years. And he began to record the events of the war in and around Radevormwald, as he had experienced most of these events himself as a teenager. This included the crash in Ülfe I; and he had even more than just the story in his head, he had taken "souvenirs" with him at the time.

These included some fragments of maps that had survived the crash and the subsequent fire.

So Friedhelm Brack wrote to the Royal Air Force in the mid-1990s and asked for information about the crash. And he was informed in writing that only two aircraft had crashed that day. Namely the RA508 over the North Sea and the PB187...and so Mr Brack concluded that the aircraft that crashed in Radevormwald/Ülfe I could only be the PB187. Although there were some inconsistencies, for example a survivor who was taken prisoner of war in Duisburg. However, there was no such survivor in the crash in Radevormwald... Nevertheless, it was completely clear to the contemporary witness Brack that the aircraft that crashed here was the PB187

In 2000, Mr Brack published the war stories of Radevormwald under the title "Als Feuer vom Himmel fiel - Auf den Spuren des Luftkrieges 1939-1945 im bergischen Land und Rheinland".

As part of my research into other Allied aircraft crashes in the Cologne area, I visited the town archives in Radevormwald and found the estate of Friedhelm Brack, who died in 2015. It contained not only the notes to his book but also the fragments of the maps he had recovered from the wreckage of the aircraft in 1945. A long period of research began, countless emails, letters and phone calls were made and the sites of the crash were visited.

After it was finally and irrefutably established that the PB187 had crashed in Duisburg and that the only survivor of the two crashes belonged to this very aircraft, it was very obvious that the Lancaster that crashed in Radevormwald must have been the RA508. It has now also been established that the maps found were used for the attack on Dortmund. Handwritten notes from the estate of navigator George Herbert Harding could provide a final certainty, as one of the maps contains handwritten notes by him.

In the meantime, I have succeeded in locating descendants of George Herbert Harding in England. And it is also very fortunate that they have kept some of his handwritten letters from the war period. After comparing the handwriting, I am very sure that the notes on the map fragments were written by Sgt Harding. Only an elaborate graphological expertise could clarify this definitively

Based on all the facts, I am 99.9% convinced that the crash site of the RA508 was found in Radevormwald. And that the bodies are still lying here somewhere under the industrial estate that has since been created.

This story was reported in the British press:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14135979/WWII-RAF-bomber-buried-crew-German-town-Lancaster-believed-lost-North-Sea-1945-crashed-land-maps-mystery-wreckage-suggest.html?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/31983756/missing-ww2-raf-bomber-lost-north-sea-solved-germany

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pQx17--cUQ