Wellington II Z8525

Do you have the crew details?

Regards,

kev35

Hi Kev. The crew details are as follows from the attached document

[ATTACH=CONFIG]216077[/ATTACH]

Gents.

I knew I had come to the right place, many many thanks indeed. All the info will be passed on to the relative this evening who will be extremely grateful of all your efforts.

Thanks again. NM

I’m not sure what you have researched already but this is the Raid Intell report for the nights operations.

File is copyright TNA AIR14/3372

It gives routes of the Ostende flights and details debrief observations from returning crews.

Regards
Ross

The memorial at Runnymede is for those that have no known grave. This includes not only those never found but also those whose bodies were found and identified but where the grave could not be subsequently found i.e. a few men buried in Russian territory, those recovered but buried at sea etc.

In this case it is that the bodies were not found at the time or during the post war searches on the continent.

As the crew has been deceased for over 25 years you can get copies of their service records from the MoD at RAF Cranwell for a fee of £30 each regardless of NoK state.

The RAF Service Record comes in a tabular form detailing units/dates/promotions/trade tests etc sufficient to track a service history but lacks any real detail on reason for death. Currently the time for delivery is between 6 and 9 months but is the only place where the service record can be obtained.

There are some short cuts that can be made.
If one of the crew was RAAF then the NAA will have a copy of his Service Record (A9301 file) and if killed in service his Casualty File (A705 file). In response to a internet request and payment of a small fee they will digitise the file and place it online for all to see. Time scale is approx. 3-4 weeks.

In this case Bedwell 404165 has had his file digitised and is open to view.

http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/BasicSearch.aspx

Search as guest

in the keywords box add

Bedwell 404165

Then hit search

Click on the sheaf of pages icon on the A705 line for his casualty file.

It will open in a new window. This file contains all the correspondence (internal and external) relating to his death. Page 20 has the letter from Driffield giving what was known about the final flight.

After you have looked at his A705 file then take a look at his service record in a similar manner. An RAAF Service record contains extra information on the service man. This extra detail has been destroyed for RAF Service records and so is not available for those held at Cranwell.

Regards
Ross

Do you have the crew details?

Regards,

kev35

Thank you very much David.

I was confused by the Runnymede memorial bit when I started looking, I can only surmise she went down in the channel.

In BCL Volume 3 , 1942 , Chorley records that the Wellington was ‘Lost without trace’ and that the crew are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial . I know his research into these losses is thorough so I would suggest that this is all the information that is available to date or certainly to 1994 when the book was published and I can see no additional information in subsequent volumes . A revised edition of Volume 1 , 1939-40 , will be published in September followed , hopefully , by the remainder .
The Air Britain W to Z serial register gives the same fate .