In the night
of 19/20 February 1944 this crew
participated in an attack on Leipzig.
They boarded Halifax II JD271 NA-M, and took off
in the early evening of the 19th. This was to be
one of the most devastating raids for Bomber
Command of the war. Part of the
operation was a diversion in which a smaller
force laid mines in and near Kiel Harbour. The German
controllers only sent part of their force of
fighters to a Kiel mine laying diversion.
When the main bomber force crossed the Dutch
coast, they were met by another part of
the German fighter force, and those German
fighters which had been sent north to Kiel
hurriedly returned. The bomber stream was
thus under attack from the coast all the way to the target.
There were further difficulties at the
target because winds were not as forecast
and many aircraft reached the Leipzig area
too early and had to orbit and await the
Pathfinders. Four aircraft were lost by
collision and approximately 20 were shot
down by flak. Leipzig was cloud-covered and
the Pathfinders had to use sky marking. The
raid appeared to be concentrated in its
early stages but scattered later.(1)
It is not known how
Halifax JD271 met its demise in which the
whole crew lost their lives. It is likely
the plane crashed into the IJsselmeer as
only the remains of three of the crew were
recovered on the IJsselmeer coast. F/O Woolverton is buried at Enkhuizen
General Cemetery. He was 23.
The two other
members of his crew found were air gunner
Warrant Officer II Neil Stewart. He is
buried in Andijk, just north of Enkhuizen.
Australian crew member Herbert Lister was
later reburied at the Canadian Military Cemetery in Groesbeek, near Nijmegen.
The rest of
the crew is still missing and are
commemorated at the Runnymede Memorial.
Ralph Woolverton continues: "My
parents had five sons in the R.C.A.F., two of
them in aircrew. I was less than two years
younger than Alan and was R.C.A.F. navigation
officer attached to the RAF Ferry Command,
delivering bombers across the Atlantic to
Britain and to the Far East. I went down to
Middleton-St-George from Prestwick to visit Alan
in February 1944 and was told by the Squadron
Adjutant that he had gone missing only the week
earlier. We did not learn until May, that year,
that he had been killed in action and
was buried in Holland."
