I checked later into 1940 and found Whitley Mk.V N1417 DY-B of 102 Sqn. Crashed 19th/20th May 1940 20km ENE of Eindhoven.

The pilot F/O W C G Cogman evaded capture (only to be killed on the 28th May in the sinking of the S.S. Abukir), one killed and three prisoners include an LAC J R Nicholson.

I have been through the rest of 1940 and saw no other people with the surname Nicholson.

Where is your local airfield?

That part number looks to be an American format, though it could be British.

If it is American then 15- is applicable to P-39s.

It would be nice (or should that be morally right) for the UK government to recover the remains of servicemen where they are know to exist.

However the UK govt. policy is not to bother with such recoveries, it has always been that way and no-one (despite attempts to get a reversal) had reversed the policy. The only occasions I have heard of where the MoD has carried out a recovery is when human remains have been found and they have been forced into it kicking and screaming. The recent example being the Mosi in a march off Norfolk where tidal action uncovered the wreck.

Nice to see the MUs over stated things, it is less than a mile from the road up through a field and out onto the open moor.

The aircraft suffered structural failure followed by a high speed dive into the ground.

The accident is well documented, as is the crash of DT578 a couple of hours later.

As far as i am aware little progress has been made, though trying to get info out of the person behind the project is worse than blood from a stone.

As is was almost the same as a B.6 use that as a bench mark figure, the PR.7 was a little lighter that the B.6 but unladen weight is unlikely to be that different, about 22000lb.

Human remains is a problem, the UK government has a policy of not recovering the remains of fallen personel (why else the common service headstone it depersonalises death) and the CWGC has no budget for carrying out recovery and identification on its own also they would come up against national policy which further complicates matters.

The case of the two soliders in France was a dig carried out prior to building work, most remains recovered now are accidental finds in such schemes.