Bomber pilot involved in an astonishing act of reconciliation

John Wynne 1921-2018

Wing Commander John Wynne, who has died aged 97, was a skilled and courageous wartime bomber pilot, said The Daily Telegraph. Having flown 40 missions, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1943. Decades later, he was presented with a different kind of award – the Cross of Nails – for his involvement in an extraordinary act of postwar reconciliation.

On 14 March 1945, Wynne – still only 23, but by then a veteran pilot – took off in his B-17 Flying Fortress. The mission was to provide radar-jamming support for a bomber force attacking an oil refinery near Leipzig. All went to plan, but on his return, his aircraft came under intense fire and was hit by flak. With one engine knocked out, the plane began to descend rapidly. Based on Air Ministry information, Wynne believed they’d crossed into Allied territory and ordered his crew to bail out at 1,000ft. But when he tried to bail himself, he found he was trapped by his equipment in the burning plane; and by the time he’d freed himself, it was too low for his parachute to open in time. His only hope was to fly the plane single-handed back to England. Fortunately, the fire went out, said The Times. Singing as he went, he was soon over Beachy Head and finally managed to make an emergency landing at a US airfield in Cambridgeshire. After making contact with his own 214 squadron, he wrote to the families of his crew to let them know that they would be home shortly. When they did not return, he wrote to the families again, telling them that the men must be prisoners of war, but would be safe. About a month later, the War ended.

The son of a mining engineer, John Wynne had enlisted in 1940, and remained in the RAF until 1973. Then he and his wife, Pip, became sheep farmers in the hills above Harlech in Wales. A keen conservationist, he farmed with care, and was a founding member of the Red Squirrel Trust in Wales. It wasn’t until 1992 that the War intruded into his life again, when he finally found out what had happened to his crew after that night in 1945.

Two were injured on landing near Baden-Baden and taken to hospital; the other seven were captured; they were then driven to the city of Pforzheim, which had just been destroyed by an RAF incendiary bombing raid. In the firestorm, an estimated 17,000 people perished. While the men were held in a school in the outlying village of Huchenfeld, a Nazi official whipped up a mob. Hitler Youth marched on the school and dragged the men out. Two of them managed to escape the village, but four were shot dead, and another was lynched. After the War, the official was tried and hanged but then the story faded – until 40 years later, when a German war veteran retired to the village. He unearthed its secret and, aided by the local pastor, had a plaque erected in memory of the RAF men murdered there. It reads simply, “Father, forgive”.

With the help of Canon Paul Oestreicher of Coventry Cathedral, he also tried to make contact with their relatives, and Wynne was tracked down too. Appalled by what he learnt, but moved by the village’s act of remembrance, he wrote to the mayor. He and his wife commissioned a local craftsman to make a rocking horse for the village kindergarten; he called it Hoffnung, or “hope”. “Our future shall ride upon her back,” he said, on presenting it. He arranged exchange visits for local children with a school near his home. He also urged Tom Tate, one of the two men who’d escaped, to visit Huchenfeld. There, Tate met the son of a German soldier who’d saved him from a second mob the next day; though he’d vowed never to return to Germany, he also became a regular visitor. Wynne sent daffodil wreaths, to mark the anniversaries of the raid on Pforzheim, and crocus bulbs for the cemetery where the men were shot. He is survived by Pip and their daughter. Their son was killed in a farming accident in November.