Honour for airmen after sisters find crash site
A WELSH Second World War airman who disappeared during his final bombing mission has been honoured with a memorial where his plane crashed in Germany more than 70 years ago.
Flight Lieutenant Ronald Barton, 34, and his seven fellow crew members were heading for home when their aircraft went down over Germany in 1944.
The location of their crash site was lost after the end of the war – until it was discovered two years ago following an epic search by his granddaughters Julie Barton, 53, and Debbie Bartlett, 49, from Beddau, near Pontypridd.
They identified the final resting place as a farmer’s field near the town of Cloppenburg, northern Germany, where witnesses, who were children at the time, still remembered the Lancaster bomber bursting into flames.
Last week, they returned to the field where he crashed and took part in a memorial service led by the local community, which honoured the fallen crew by erecting a plaque to mark their sacrifice.
Julie said: “When my sister and I first stood on the spot two years ago we didn’t know if we were in the right place or not, but thanks to the friendships we have made in Cloppenburg we were able to pin down the crash site and excavate and protect it.
“With no known grave sites for most of the crew it gives us a place to come and remember them.
“It was a lovely service with music and speeches and a local man came up to us and said: ‘I am so grateful to your grandfather, it is thanks to them that we are free. What they fought for led to our free- dom today’.” On October 6, 1944, Lancaster PD214 set off from RAF Metheringham in Lincolnshire on what was meant to be the crew’s last operational mission – a bombing raid on the German city of Bremen. Nothing was heard from the plane after take-off, and the crew was listed as missing.
Ms Barton said: “Eyewitnesses at the crash site said they could hear the bombing from their farm 40 miles away and then it went quiet.
“Then they heard this odd engine noise and in the pitch black a bomber suddenly dropped out of nowhere and exploded – creating four large burning craters.
“Children nearby came and played on the site in the days after. They found an handkerchief with Barlow stitched on it and a flying boot with my grandfather’s name on it.”
In 1946, an RAF investigation team exhumed the two bodies taken away by the Germans and identified them as Australian trainee pilot Flight Lieutenant John Colclough Barlow, 35, and Rear Gunner Sergeant Ronald James Paul, 20. They are both buried in Becklingen War Cemetery in northern Germany.
By accessing Australian RAAF crash records and enlisting the help of German aviation archaeologists, Julie and Debbie discovered eyewitnesses who had seen the crash as chil- dren and were able to pinpoint the exact location.
They discovered that the bodies of two of the airmen had been recovered from the crashed bomber by German soldiers but the six others who died were left in the ground along with the wreckage.
The other six men on board that night were all listed as having “no known grave” and their names appear on the RAF memorial in Runnymede, Surrey.
A representative of 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham attended the memorial service and laid a cross with poppies for each of the fallen crew.
The plaque marking their sacrifice is placed on a boulder taken from the site of the crash.
The other five missing crew are navigator Pilot Flight Lieutenant Douglas Stewart, 29, Flight Sergeant George Kirby, 22, Wireless Operator Gordon Grogan, age unknown, Canadian Bomb Aimer Pilot Officer Clyde Royal, 31, and Mid-Upper Gunner Flight Sergeant James Fell, 21.