Location Beuningen, Netherlands Material Steel, bluestone Height 1.15 m Length 1 m Created 2016 | Designer Hein van Houten Dedicated to LM325 crew Opened 23 June 2016 Width 1 m | |
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Opening date 23 June 2016 (2016-06-23) | ||
The Lancaster Memorial in Beuningen, The Netherlands, is a Memorial that commemorates the crew of the British Avro Lancaster LM325 SR-J that crashed on the spot during the night of 22 to 23 June 1943 in World War II. The bomber belonged to No. 101 Squadron RAF. Six of the seven crew lost their lives.
Contents
Background
The Lancaster was part of a formation of 557 planes that were heading to the Ruhrgebied for a large scale attack on the war industry around the German city of Mülheim. In this attack, Mülheim was destroyed for two-thirds. The plane took off in the night of 22 June 1943 from RAF Ludford Magna airbase, Lincolnshire. It's crew consisted of seven airmen:
On June 23, at 1:38 am the plane was intercepted above the village of Beuningen, near the city of Nijmegen, the Netherlands by a Messerschmitt Bf 110 night fighter. The Lancaster was hit and caught fire immediately. Heavily burning, it circled a few minutes around Beuningen. The crew managed to drop their bomb load in the fields around the village, preventing the loss of civilian lives. At 1:45 am the plane crashed aside the De Steeg, the road from Beuningen to the neighboring village of Wijchen, 3 km south of the village center. Many people witnessed the incident. The burning wreckage was soon closed off by German soldiers. A Dutch constable also arrived. In his report, the wrote that he saw five crew members and concluded that none of them had survived the crash.
The only survivor
Because bomb aimer Ted Williams lay horizontally in the nose of the plane, close to the escape hatch, he was able to leave the plane in time and to jump with his parachute. He fainted while jumping, and due to the strong wind from the west, he drifted East towards Nijmegen. While he became conscious again, he landed in a garden in the village of Heesch, today a residence area of Nijmegen. He was offered help by the owner of the house. He was given medical attention by a doctor for cuts and burn wounds. But soon the Germans found out that he had landed in the area, so he was escorted to the local police station. There he was arrested. He was sent as a prisoner of war to Stalag Luft VI near the Polish-Lithuanian border. He would remain imprisoned until the end of the war.
Beavan Tomkins also escaped from the plane, but he did not survive the jump. He was found dead in Heesch and was united later with his deceased comrades. The six victims are buried in Uden War Cemetery.
Williams suffered all his life from having been a POW. He could not understand why just he survived. In 1950, he visited Beuningen for a commemorative ceremony. After that he intended to never return. By an extraordinary coincidence, 31 years later on a vacation in Mallorca, he met an old inhabitant from Heesch. That person's family doctor happened to be the doctor that treated Williams for his wounds after his jump. They became close friends, and in 1983 Williams revisited Nijmegen and Beuningen after all. He met, amongst other people, the doctor and owner of the house where he landed at that time. Ted Williams died in 2004.
The wreckage
The wreckage was later recovered and shredded. Only one propeller has been saved because the part fell off just before the plane hit the ground. Lying in a ditch it was overlooked by the German soldiers. The landowner hid the part in a shed and turned it over the municipality after the war.
The German pilot
The German pilot who shot down Lancaster LM325 was Oberleutnant Werner Baake. He was a member of the I. Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 of the German Luftwaffe (1st group of the 1st Nightfighter squadron) and was stationed on Gilze-Rijen Air Base. That night he downed two more bombers. During the war Baake flew 195 nightly missions in which he shot down 41 planes. For his actions he was decorated several times by the Nazis. On October 2, 1944 he was promoted to commander of I./NJG1. After the war he became a civil pilot at the Lufthansa. Eventually he suffered the same fate as the crew members of all the planes that he shot down: Baake died on June 15, 1964 when he crashed in an aircraft accident with a Boeing 720. During a test flight, the crew made a successful barrel-roll, although this was not allowed by the Lufthansa for this kind of airplane. On a second attempt the airplane broke down due to overloading. It crashed near the village of Ansbach. All three crew members including Baake died in the accident.
The erection of a memorial
In 1946 a black cross was erected close to the point of impact. During the first years after the war, this was the place where on may 4th the local Remembrance of the Dead was held. People used to walk in a silent march from the townhall to the place of the crash. On September 17, 1950 a memorial for the allied pilots was unveiled in the park next to the town hall. Ted Williams was present at the ceremony as well as ten surviving family of the victims. The propeller of the plane has been processed in the monument. Since then the May 4th remembrance is taking place at this memorial. Due to an extension of the town hall, the memorial was moved to the park next to the St. Cornelius Church in Beuningen in 1984.
In due course of time the crash site came a bit forgotten. Until in 2013 the local liberation committee took initiative to mark the site with a small sign. It was unveiled in the middle of the night on 1:45 hours, exactly 70 years after the incident. The sign started to serve as a small memorial where annually two remembrances take place. The first is on May 4, preceding the national and local Remembrance of the Dead. At 18:30 hours there is a ceremony where the crew is honored. Every year on the fourth Wednesday of July, the International Four Days Marches Nijmegen pass through Beuningen. On this day there is a ceremony by soldiers from the British Military who take part in the Marches.
In 2014 the memorial has been adopted by the local Scouting branch. They maintain the memorial and keep the location tidy during the year, and they assist with the organisation of the ceremonies.
Every year the ceremonies and also the May 4th remembrance at the church are visited by more and more people. That is why in 2016 the Scouts and civilians took the initiative in founding a real memorial, together with the municipality. It has been unveiled on June 23, 2016 by Ab Bruisten, eyewitness of the crash at the age of 11, and Tim Barlow, grandnephew of flight engineer Jack Osborne.
The memorial has been designed by the artist Hein van Houten.
Description
The memorial is consisting of a bluestone base with an embedded square tablet. On this tablet there is a image made by artist Hein van Houten that is inspired by the eyewitness account of Ab Bruisten. It shows an impression of the crashed airplane and the sole crew member that lands with his parachute. The tablet lists the crew's names and their pictures.
The pedestal is the center of a circle on the ground made from square coblestones and filled with gravel. Within the Scouting the circle with a dot in the centre "ʘ" is the symbol for 'End of Trail', but also for 'Death'.
The tablet reads: