Operation: Homberg

Date: 20/21 July 1944 (Thursday/Friday)

Unit: No. 90 Squadron (motto: ‘Celer’ – ‘Swift’)

Type: Avro Lancaster I

Serial: LM185

Code: WP-D

Base: RAF Tuddenham, Suffolk

Location: Nederwetten, Boxtel, Holland

Pilot: Fl/Sgt. William Lane, 613629, RAF, Age 23 – Killed

Fl/Eng: Sgt. Edward John Flaherty, 1219836, RAF, Age 23 – Killed

Nav: Sgt. William Norman Morgan, 1651121, RAFVR, Age 21 – Killed

Air/Bmr: Fl/Sgt. Hugh McBeath Brown, 1415876, RAFVR, Age 24 – Killed

W/Op/Air/Gnr: Sgt. Peter Harry Richardson, 1580737, RAFVR, Age 20 – Killed (1)

Air/Gnr: Sgt. Arthur Forster Marshall, 1699568, RAFVR, Age 19 – Killed

Air/Gnr: Sgt. Reginald Percy Naylor, 2212864, RAFVR, Age 35 – Killed

Reason for Loss

On the night of 20/21 July 1944, 147 Lancasters and 11 Mosquitos took off to attack the Fischer-Tropsch synthetic oil refinery and aviation fuel plant at Homberg. Although the raid was considered a relative success, it came at a heavy price: while the ground anti-aircraft defences were as expected, German Nachtjagd night fighters were merciless in their assault on the approaching bomber stream, catching the formation of Lancasters by surprise. Twenty aircraft failed to return.

LM185 took off from its base at RAF Tuddenham, Suffolk, at 23:02 hrs. The aircraft is thought to have been intercepted and shot down by Lt. Josef Forster of 8./NJG2 at 01:45 hrs, crashing into the suburbs of Boxtel.

Two other Lancasters of 90 Squadron were also lost on this raid: LM183 P-L, 

piloted by Fl/Lt. Philip Rossington, in whichall seven of the crew were killed, and LM189 WP-U, flown by F/O. Frank McGlone, whose crew of six were also all killed.

Above: the crew of LM185, L–R – possibly Sgt. Peter Harry Richardson, Fl/Sgt. Hugh McBeath Brown, possibly Sgt. Arthur Forster Marshall, Sgt. Edward John Flaherty; front – probably Sgt. William Norman Morgan, Fl/Sgt. William Lane, probably Sgt. Reginald Percy Naylor. (Courtesy Carole McLernon)

Discovery of the Crew

A farm field just south of what is today the Soeterbeekseweg (then the Nederwettensche Street) held a grim secret for weeks in the summer of 1944. On 9 August that year, searchers located a gun turret from a Lancaster bomber, along with the remains of two crew members who had manned it.

The men were identified as Sgt. Reginald Percy Naylor, 35, the rear gunner, from Ellesmere Port in Cheshire – married to Sarah Naylor and son of Arthur Lewis and May Naylor – and Sgt. Arthur Forster Marshall, only 19, the turret gunner, from Low Fell, Gateshead, son of Arthur and Caroline Marshall. Today they rest side by side in Eindhoven (Woensel) General Cemetery, Plot KK, Graves 117 and 118.

Their aircraft, Lancaster LM185 (squadron code WP-D), flew with No. 90 Squadron RAF out of Tuddenham. It took off just before midnight on 20 July 1944, part of a large raid – 147 Lancasters and 11 Mosquitos – targeting the Rheinpreussen synthetic fuel plant at Homberg, a facility producing 200,000 tons of fuel annually and critical to keeping the German war machine running. The bomber never made it home. Badly damaged, it went down at around 01:45 hrs on 21 July near Onrooi, in Boxtel. Naylor and Marshall did not survive the crash itself – they died when the turret separated from the fuselage and fell separately. The remaining five crew members are buried at the Roman Catholic Sacred Heart of Jesus churchyard in Boxtel.

How the bodies came to be found is documented in a report filed by Chief Guard Jacob Boluijt on 10 August 1944. In it, a local farmer, 55-year-old Matheus Sloots of Nederwetten (address A49a), described discovering the wreckage while cutting oats the previous afternoon: he had come across part of an aircraft with four machine guns, partially burned, in a clearing in his field south of the road. About ninety minutes later, nearby, he found a badly decomposed body, which the clothing suggested belonged to an English or American airman.

Remarkably, the turret and its two occupants lay undiscovered in that field for nearly three weeks, from 21 July until 8 August. The five airmen who came down near Onrooi in Boxtel went unnoticed even longer – their fate was not established until September 1945.

For years afterward, until sometime in the late 1950s, the two men's graves lay in a spot beside the Sloots farmhouse on Soeterbeekseweg, in front of what was known as the Zeldenrust farm (No. 29), visible to anyone passing by. Since 2014, marking 70 years since the liberation of Nuenen c.a., an information marker at this spot has formed part of a local cycling route.

Burial Details

Fl/Sgt. William Lane. Boxtel (Sacred Heart of Jesus) Roman Catholic Churchyard, Grave 6. Son of Hilda Lane, of Middlesbrough, Cleveland, England.

Sgt. Edward John Flaherty. Boxtel (Sacred Heart of Jesus) Roman Catholic Churchyard, Grave 7. Son of Isabel Flaherty, and stepson of Robert Priestley, of Batley, Yorkshire, England. Epitaph: ‘Dearest Only Son. Cherished Memories.’

Sgt. William Norman Morgan. Boxtel (Sacred Heart of Jesus) Roman Catholic Churchyard, Grave 1. Son of George Robert and Edith Joyce Morgan, of Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales. Epitaph: ‘Be No Healer Not the Valiant Sons of Gwent. Beloved Norman.’

Fl/Sgt. Hugh McBeath Brown. Boxtel (Sacred Heart of Jesus) Roman Catholic Churchyard, Grave 8. Son of Dr. William Brown, M.B., and Margaret Elizabeth Brown, of Penyfai Lane, Glamorgan, Wales. Husband of Elizabeth Brown. Epitaph: ‘He Gave His Life With Steadfast Courage For The Common Weal. Nos Da Iddo.’

Sgt. Peter Harry Richardson. Boxtel (Sacred Heart of Jesus) Roman Catholic Churchyard, Grave 5. Son of Robert Tait Richardson and Jessie May Richardson, of Billesley, Birmingham, England. Epitaph: ‘Our Proudest Possessions Are Our Silent Thoughts.’

Sgt. Arthur Forster Marshall. Eindhoven (Woensel) General Cemetery, Plot KK, Grave 117. Son of Arthur and Caroline Marshall, of Low Fell, Gateshead, Co. Durham, England. Epitaph: ‘Silent Thoughts Bring Many a Tear for One We Loved So Dear. Dad, Shelagh and Gran.’

Sgt. Reginald Percy Naylor. Eindhoven (Woensel) General Cemetery, Plot KK, Grave 118. Son of Arthur Lewis Naylor and May Naylor; husband of Sarah Naylor, of Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England. Epitaph: ‘Maybe in the Better Land We’ll Know the Meaning of Our Tears, and We’ll Understand.’

Notes

(1) Sgt. Peter Harry Richardson was a former pupil of Moseley Grammar School (now Moseley School and Sixth Form). We have worked closely with the school’s historians to remember all former pupils who died while serving with the RAF and who are recorded on the school memorial.

90 Squadron

The squadron had an unusually troubled, multi-phase war within Bomber Command. At the outbreak of war it was a training unit, teaching Blenheim crews, and disbanded in April 1940 into No. 17 OTU. It reformed in May 1941 at RAF Watton as Bomber Command’s only squadron flying the American Boeing Fortress I – its first mission was to Wilhelmshaven on 8 July 1941. The Fortress experiment was a failure: of 51 sorties flown, half were aborted due to aircraft faults, and of 50 tons of bombs dropped only about one ton hit the intended targets. The squadron gave up its Fortresses in February 1942 and disbanded again that month.

It reformed a third time in November 1942 at RAF Bottesford as a night bomber squadron in No. 3 Group, equipped with the Short Stirling. It flew Stirlings through the brutal Battle of the Ruhr and raids on heavily defended targets including Berlin, taking heavy losses. In mid-1944 it converted to the Avro Lancaster, which it flew for the rest of the war. Its last raid was against Bremen on 22 April 1945. Over the course of the war it flew 4,613 operational sorties and lost 86 aircraft.

Boxtel (Heilig Hart van Jesus) Roman Catholic Churchyard

This burial ground is the churchyard of the parish church of Heilig Hart van Jesus (Holy Heart of Jesus), which lies on the north-west side of the town, in the Baroniestraat. Near the entrance, against the southern boundary hedge, are the graves of one British soldier and five airmen of the Royal Air Force. The local community visits the crew’s graves every year to lay fresh flowers.

Eindhoven (Woensel) General Cemetery

Almost four-fifths of the men buried here belonged to the air forces and lost their lives in raids over this part of Holland, or on the return flight from Germany, between 1941 and 1944. Men of the land forces buried here died between September 1944 and May 1945; the 79th and 86th British General Hospitals were based at Eindhoven for almost all of that period. There are now nearly 700 casualties of the 1939–45 war commemorated at this site, and every year the people of Woensel place a candle on each of the 678 war graves.

Dedication

For Carole McLernon, niece of pilot Fl/Sgt. William Lane and all relatives of the crew.

Sources and Acknowledgements

• Carole McLernon, niece of pilot Fl/Sgt. William Lane
• The late Gied Segers, of Boxtel (see right)
• Keith Townsend, historian, Moseley Secondary/Grammar School
• Paul ten Broeke and Moos Raaijmakers, for grave photographs
• 90 Squadron (RAF) during the Second World War
• Kracker Luftwaffe Archives
• Traces of War
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• International Bomber Command Centre
• Aircrew Remembered Archives

We seek additional information and photographs. Please contact us via the Helpdesk. Compiled from official National Archive and Service sources, contemporary press reports, personal logbooks, diaries and correspondence, reference books, other sources, and interviews.