Lancaster NN775 displayed at Overloon, Netherlands.

See here for a higher resolution version: https://flic.kr/p/2qotEcc

It is a powerful way to display these remains. There is an information sign next to the wreckage and you can use an app on your phone to get an AR view of how the aircraft looked before its demise. That includes details about its final flight as well IIRC.

Powerful image

They did a fantastic job with her display of wreckage and I feel honoured to have helped ID parts for them as well!

I was there at Christmas, and there still were relics out in the woods, including the hulks of some armoured vehicles, and what I think was maybe a sniper’s one man turret, which I felt obliged to investigate.

I’ve pondered that myself, hypersonic, and if it were family of mine I think I would prefer that they were recovered and had a grave if at all possible, rather than spending eternity in a marsh. I don’t have the details to hand, but think of the Spitfire pilot recoverd from Chilham in the 1980s whose remains were so close to the surface that one deep plough could have scattered him irretrievably. However, I understand how you feel, it’s not something that’s easy to have logical views on.

This is moot in terms of my family as it happens – there are two brothers still missing from WW1, one  irrecoverably mashed into the soil of the Somme (Ernst Junger gives a graphic description in Storm of Steel of the ground he must lie in, they can only have been a couple of hundred yards apart), and the other aboard a submarine in the North Sea. I can’t imagine either will ever be found.

I wonder whether Overloon still has stuff out in the woods as it did in the 1980s? Appalling for preservation, but incrediby atmospheric, with stuff apparently just left where it had stopped in 1944.

It is a very large collection of the remains of the Lanc. 3 crew members were found in the wreckage. I do have a problem with the disturbance of the war dead final resting places.

However, Overloon Museum which opened in May 1946, must be one of the oldest WWII museums anywhere.

H

Thanks for the heads up on this. That’s an impressive haul of wreckage recovered together with some of the crew. It prompted me to look up where the aircraft had originated from, and low and behold it was part of 514 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach near Cambridge – fairly local to me.

For those interested here’s a bit more on Lancaster NN775!

https://lancasterglabbeek.weebly.com/history.html