Personnel Index - Detail

Name
GUMBLEY
First Names
Bernard Alexander
Rank
Sgt (while with 49Sqn)
Service
RNZAF
Service Number
NZ414614
Crew Position
Pilot
Posting Out
4/43
Cemetery

 

Sgt Gumbley completed a tour of 30 operations with 49Sqn (five of which were to Berlin).

His tour was completed in exactly 5 months between the 13th November 1942 and the 13th April 1943.

Flight Lieutenant Gumbley was killed on the 21/3/45 whilst serving with 617Sqn.

He and his crew had the very sad distinction of being the only crew killed in action flying one of the B1 Special Lancs (PD117 YZ-L).
They were shot down by flak when attacking the Arbergen railway bridge near Bremen 21 Mar 1945.
The crew went down in the flaming aircraft with their 'Tallboy' bomb detonating on impact.

He is remembered on the Runnymede Memorial.

(Details provided by John Ward, 49Sqn President)

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Extract is from Bill Chorley's Bomber Command Losses


The location of the crashsite with the Lipmann Farm in the background.
The crater has now been filled in but when the Tallboy loaded Lancaster exploded, it was 30 metres wide and 18 metres deep.

From the Auckland War Memorial Museum website
 

Image provided by Peter Hyde

Sgt B A Gumbley, P/O A Creamer, Sgt R Hyde, Sgt J CampbellSgt R A G Turner, Sgt J Wood, Sgt C W Morley.
 

The logbook of Sgt Gumbley's air gunner can be downloaded from his page. It records some "shakey does" including being upside down over the target.