Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
RYANAIR PILOT FINDS BISMARCK’S BOMBER
Five-year hunt uncovers WW2 heroism
A PILOT has uncovered the final resting place of a British bomber that helped sink the Bismarck.
Luca Lazzara, 38, spent five years hunting for the wreckage of four Royal Navy Swordfish torpedo bombers that crashed on the north coast of Sicily.
His quest began when he saw photos on the Facebook page for his home city of Cefalu, showing an upturned biplane that had crashed on the beach on November 12, 1941.
From records and flight logs, Ryanair pilot Luca learned one of the four aircraft was the first to be credited with a successful torpedo hit against the German battleship, days before it was scuttled on May 27, 1941. The
Swordfish was later transferred from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.
It was one of four Swordfish torpedo bombers from 830 Squadron that set off from Malta to hit an Axis convoy over the Strait of Sicily on the night of
November 11, 1941. Three ended up ditching in the sea off Cefalu and one crash-landed on the beach.
Of the nine crew, two died and the seven survivors were captured.
The Ryanair pilot got access to Italian documents that helped him track down relatives of the airmen, who had never told their families about their mission. He said: “I managed to contact the 96-year-old brother of one of the missing airmen [who] was still holding out hope that he would see him alive. The family thought he might have survived somehow and lost his memory and couldn’t find his way back home.” Lieutenant Aidan Frederick Wigram and Leading Airman Ken Dickens Griffiths died when their Swordfish exploded. Neither of their families knew where or how they had died, and Griffiths’ had held out hope that he might have survived. Mr Lazzara is now determined to contact all the men’s families.