German WW2 "War Graves in Penzance Cemetery

The usual convention was to use the date of discovery of bodies found at sea, or on the foreshore, as the date of death.

Richard Hille 12/02/1941 was Luftwaffe.

Looks like the date of recovery of his body has been used.

Moggy

Interestingly enough, according to “THE BLITZ THEN AND NOW”, volume 2, page 413, R. HILLE’s aircraft was shot down on the night of 31st January / 1st February 1941.

He was the only crew member to be recovered.

Regards, Cabbage

From a seemingly trivial request – so many answers & SO MUCH history.
Great work to each of you.

Hi

I am not sure if your question received a response on another forum, but these are the details you were looking for:

Both Schweizer and the Unknown German were members of the crew of U-1209 which hit Wolf Rock near the Scilly Isles on the 18th December 1944. 7 other crew members died, including the Captain, Oberleutnant zur See Huelsenbeck who had a heart attack onboard HMCS Montreal on the journey into Plymouth.

Elsperger is recorded as being a crew member of U-1169, which was sunk by depth charges from HMS Duckworth, south of the Lizard. There is a discrepancy here as U-1169 was sunk on the 29 March, and the grave says 22 March. It is possible he was a member of one of the other U-boats sunk in the area in early 1945 – U-399, U-1199, U-1208, U-605, or U-1018.

Hille’s body was recovered from the sea by a Newlyn trawler. The Western Morning News newspaper reported on the Friday 14th February that his body was hauled up in a trawl off Land’s End on the previous Wednesday. A report in the Cornishman newspaper of the 20th detailed his burial at Penzance cemetery with full military honours.

Matt

You are right Ross but sadly I was on a ‘frolic’ from my usual area of research that takes up most of my spare time! Im going to cheat and post the question on a Naval forum!
Thank you to everyone. K

My interest is sea losses of aircraft so once I confirmed that they were not naval airmen I left it at that without further research.

Would spoil the “information hunt” if the answer to everything was just a question away on the forum.

Regards
Ross

Thank you. I must have missed one of the Graves, Hille ( I was on a flying visit in my lunch break!). Ross do you know how the Kriegsmarine men were lost?

Elsperger is shown as an Obegefreiter (DOB 27.10.24) but that is all.

No rank shown for Schweizer, although DOB 01.01.15.

From dates of death I’d suspect they may have been POW deaths, and quite a few volunteered for mine clearance duties and were killed doing that. Other than that, natural causes or suicide were the usual.

The burial register should give place of death and that will start to tell you something.

PS – just checked. Not on the list of Bomb Disposal casualties…..and Ross McNeill has now added more detail than I had in my listings.

I can only add that Hille was crew member from a 1./KG28 He 111 that went into the sea off Treen after being engaged by a naval patrol vessel, 1T+LH, W.Nr 3757.

There are three named graves.

Elsperger and Schweizer were Kreigsmarine and Richard Hille 12/02/1941 was Luftwaffe.

Regards
Ross

Did you check the graves register at the cemetery?

That often will give you more details.

It is suggested by the War Graves Photographic Project that Schweizer and Elsperger were Kriegsmarine, not Luftwaffe.

Moggy