From the BBC:
“Dutch find Czech crew remains
at WW2 RAF bomber crash site”
(Two of the Czechoslovak crew
shown here - Karel Valach (1st left) and Vilem Konstacky (4th from left) - died
in the June raid)
Dutch salvage workers have found
some bone fragments and scraps of airmen's clothing in the debris of an RAF
Wellington bomber shot down over the Netherlands in June 1941. The Wellington
had a six-man Czech crew, five of whom died. It was downed by a German night
fighter, crashing at Nieuwe Niedorp, a village about 60km (37 miles) north of
Amsterdam. It had been bombing the port of Bremen. The dig is part of a wider
Dutch project to find wartime crews' remains. A week ago the Czech Ambassador
to the Netherlands, Katerina Sequensova, visited the site, where recovery work began
on 25 May. Civil engineers and the Dutch defence ministry are involved,
including military forensic identification specialists.
In World War Two the RAF's 311
(Czechoslovak) Squadron had airmen who had fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia
and had then had combat experience in Poland or France. It was based at RAF
East Wretham, near Thetford in Norfolk. The squadron flew Vickers Wellington
and Liberator bombers. More than 5,500 aircraft crashed during the air war over
the Netherlands in 1940-1945, and as many as 50 are believed to have crews'
remains. Geert Jonker, a member of the identification team at Nieuwe Niedorp,
told Czech TV: "They never returned home to Czechoslovakia, so the least
we can do is go out and search for them and give them a proper burial."
(The Czech ambassador (L) met the
salvage team at the crash site)
The Wellington's pilot, Flight
Sgt Vilem Bufka, parachuted out of the burning plane, broke a leg on landing
and was captured by the Germans. He was imprisoned in Colditz Castle, with many
other Royal Air Force POWs, and returned to Czechoslovakia in August 1945. He
wrote a memoir - Bomber T2990 Gone Silent - and died in 1967. The five crew who
died were: co-pilot Alois Rozum, radio operator Leonhard Smrcek, navigator
Vilem Konstacky, front gunner Jan Hejna and rear gunner Karel Valach. In its
tribute to the crew, the Czech Foreign Ministry says Valach had "met an
English girl Doreen Francis Todd and they were married on 10 December
1940". It adds: "Their son was born in 1941."
The RAF Museum says 311 Squadron
focused mainly on bombing the cities of Bremen and Cologne. "The
squadron's greatest success was the sinking of the blockade runner Alsterufer,
which transported over 300 tons of rare tungsten from Japan to Germany,"
it says. The operation took place off the French Atlantic coast in 1943. During
the war the Allies imposed a naval blockade to stop cargo ships bringing essential
supplies to Nazi Germany.
^ Even after 70+ years it is nice
to see this hard work going on to find and honor the men and women who helped
the Allies win World War 2. ^
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