Sergeant Ernest Charles Pocknell, Air Bomber
Sergeant Edwin Carter, Wireless Operator
Sergeant Leonard Walter Searle, Air Gunner
Sergeant James Hurst, Air Gunner
This crew arrived at 7 squadron from 1667 Heavy
Conversion Unit on 4 September 1943, after they
had been teamed up at 30 O.T.U. They flew their
first two missions on 4/5 October 1943 to
Frankfurt and on 7/8 October to Stuttgart. For
some unknown reason Sgt Hurst did not fly with
this crew on their mission on 2/21 October to
Leipzig.
F/S Gore replaced Sgt Hurst on this mission.
On the night
of 20/21 October 1943, the crew was
scheduled to fly an operation to Leipzig.
They were one of 73 Pathfinder
crews that would lead the main force of 285
bombers. 20 year old pilot F/S Donald Watson
piloted Lancaster JB175 MG-A. The plane was
intercepted en route to Leipzig by Oblt.
Schnaufer, who had taken off from airbase
Quackenbrück,
just over the Dutch/German border.
People of the
town of Gieten heard the machine guns and
the roar of engines. Several people
witnessed the Lancaster crash at 19.20,
just outside the town of Gieten, near the
Zwanemeer forest. The fuselage came down
just behind the cemetery, the tail section
some distance away, on one side of a road. A
wing lay in a field on the other side of
that road.
The village
was saved from disaster as the bomb load,
consisting of seven 500 pound bombs and one
4,000 pound 'cookie', failed to explode. The
next day, one crew member was recovered 200
meters from the wreck and buried on the
22nd. The others were not recovered until 10
November as the Germans had a difficult time
defusing the unexploded bombs still in the
wreckage.
The whole crew
perished in the crash. They are buried in
Gieten. F/S Watson was 20.
Sgt James Hurst teamed up with another crew but
fared the same fate as his first crew. On 16
December 1943 he and his crew were shot down,
also by Oblt. Schnaufer, not far from where the
crew of F/S Watson had come down. That crew is
buried at Lemmer.
(picture by
Wim Bastiaanse)
