Search on for WWII airmen’s families
After more than 75 years, the site where three Kiwi bomber crew died in a World War II plane crash has been rediscovered.
Now researchers are looking for the men’s descendants so they can give them a fitting memorial.
Erik Wieman, with the help of German archaeological services, has discovered the spot where the Stirling bomber crashed on the night of September 5-6, 1943.
Only one of the sevenman English and Kiwi crew survived.
Those killed included bomb aimer/flight sergeant David Herbert William Badcock, son of George and Florence Mary Badcock, of Ha¯ wera; navigator/ flight sergeant Alexander Hunter Holms, son of Alexander Scott Holms and Helen Holms, of Invercargill, and wireless operator/air gunner warrant officer Adrian Vincent Douglas, son of Mr. And Mrs. E. Douglas, Clayton Road, Ohinemutu, Rotorua.
An excavation of the crash site is being planned and afterwards a memorial for the crew will be erected, said Wieman, who is trying to contact the men’s families.
‘‘We want to make this almost forgotten site, and the sacrifice of the soldiers that were killed there, visible again,’’ he said.
‘‘The descendants, the families of the crew, usually do not know what happened or where. We want to change this.’’
The Stirling bomber of the 149th Squadron Royal Air Force was part of a raid that left RAF Lakenheath in the UK on September 5, 1943 on a mission to bomb the cities of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim.
Doug Guest and Alex Holms, from the UK, were the only crew members clearly identified when the Germans recovered the bodies the next day.
The sole survivor was tail gunner Harry Barnard, from the UK, who became a prisoner of war. He died in the 1970s.
Over the years the site of the crash was lost but in 2004 a witness was able to help local historians rediscover it.
Wiemann has worked with many historical research groups previously and found the site of a plane shot down over Germany in 1944 with the loss of 20 Canadians.
Anyone who may know of the families or wants to contact Wieman can do so at kontakt@igheimatforschung.de