The four-engine Lancaster bomber of the 460th Squadron of the Royal Air Force was in the evening of June 12, 1943 ascended from Binbrook base in the county of Lincolnshire in England for an attack on Bochum in Germany. To this offensive 503 aircraft took part. According to an English source, 24 aircraft lost, two of which were from the 406th Squadron, namely W-4316 (AR-Q) and W-4329. It is not clear which plane came down at Grafhorst known.
The Lancaster in question was delivered on June 13, 1943 1.30 am hit by a German fighter plane and crashed the Ganzediep, a tributary of the IJssel. The wreck still has about burned in the water for an hour. Six crew members were killed. Initially, only three of them were recovered, namely: Vaughan, Lundie and Sanders. They were either knocked out of the plane or without it parachute out. On June 15, 1943 they were buried on the Grafhorst General Cemetery. The remaining three airmen, Young, Day and Thomas, were taken from the Ganzendiep a few days later and buried with their comrades on June 22, 1943, in an allied plot. The seventh crewmember, 22-year-old Canadian gunner John Carlyle Cornis, managed to get to safety by parachute. He came seriously injured down on the land of a cattle farmer on the Kamperzeedijk in the municipality Genemuiden. The occupier started a search and found him in the yard of the livestock farmer. Cornish was transferred to the Wilhelmina-Gasthuis in Amsterdam, where he stayed for a few weeks. After his recovery he was transferred as a prisoner of war to Germany. Cornish was liberated by the Scottish regiment on 2 May 1945 Royal Dragoon Guards. |
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