Personnel Index - Detail
6/7 October, 1944; BREMEN:
1 and 5 Groups combined their efforts once again, when 246 Lancasters delivered a tremendous 'hammer blow' to Bremen. On a clear moonlit night, the Mosquitoes had little difficulty in marking the aiming point before calling the Main Force in to bomb. Large fires were soon started; F/O Russell (PB370) and crew reported that the glow from the fires could be seen 100 miles away.
The squadron had dispatched 17 aircraft and decided to send five new crews on the raid.
Aircraft started to request landing instructions shortly after 22.00hrs but by 22.38hrs, only 15 had landed back at Fiskerton. Into the early hours of Saturday morning, it became clear that for the first time since 28/29 July the squadron had suffered casualties.
The crew members in F/O Harrop's aircraft have no known graves but are remembered on the Runnymede Memorial, except for their Canadian bomb aimer, P/O Ernest Russell who is buried in Risør Cemetery, 25 kilometres from Arendal in Norway.
Claim by Lt Hermann Stock 12/NJG3 - Sea 30km North of Baltrum (UP 94 Jaguar): 4,500m at 19:43.
(Nachtjagd Combat Archives 1944 Part 4 - Theo Boiten)
Information received from the Norwegian Red Cross
Information courtesy of John Johns
Lancaster PB353 (EA-E)
F/O K. Harrop Pilot (Missing)
Sgt J.G. McKenzie F/E (Missing)
P/O R.D. Scott RCAF NAV (Missing)
Sgt J.S. McClenahan W/OP (Missing)
Sgt S. Hodgkinson A/G (Missing)
P/O E.A. Russell A/B (Killed)
F/S T. Rees A/G (Missing)
Crew on their 4th operation
Photographs of the original grave.