6 Group Unavailable
405 City of Vancouver Squadron (Ducimus). Target - Dusseldorf, Germany. 405 Sqn. Halifax II W1109 LQ-S lost over Germany, Sergeant EA Anderson (RCAF), Sergeant JW Irish (RCAF), Sergeant J Hunter (RAF), Sergeant JF O'Brien (RAF), Sergeant WAB Laughlin (RAF), Sergeant S Woodman (RAF) and Sergeant FC Bond (RAF) were killed.
THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT OF THE CRASH SITE PROVIDED BY LOCAL RESIDENT PAUL STEENTJES JULY 1st 2023
I moved to Germany for work years ago and decided to stay and bought a house in the country in what is called the lower Rhine. This area is located south west of the Ruhr meaning to begin the return back to the UK the formations made a wide turn and came through here trying to avoid the major night fighter base at Venlo in the process. As a result more than 550 allied bombers crashed in the lower Rhine area and we still get bomb disposal alarm on a very regular basis. A local historian wrote a book documenting nearly all crashes but there are many irregularities and mistakes.
For me, the W1109 story started when the old gardner here who since died told us that this author was wrong attributing the site which is about 300 yards from my house in the village of Anrath, (2 miles to Vorst) to Lancaster R5867 EM-T of 207 sq out of Bottesford a week earlier. As I later found out it actually came down on the banks of the Rhine across from Duisburg, its target.
There was a photo in this book of part of a wing and undercarriage which looked more like a Halifax than a Lancaster, this was confirmed back in the UK. I went to look at the site, which has not changed much since then and is still farmland like most around here. The current farmer is extremely supportive as are all locals I've met regarding this. I then found several more pics and a number of eye witnesses. One Vorst person showed me a prop blade in perfect condition which his brother had secured along with a browning. This brother was in the Waffen SS and bullied his way through the usual Luftwaffe cordon. It's the way things were then apparently.
The Düsseldorf raid had the inner Rhine port of nearby Neuss as a secondary target which would have been in a straight to Anrath and then west. From what I know W1109 was hit by the permanent 88mm Flak emplacement at Klein Jerusalem, a chapel!!, a few miles east of Anrath, seems to have partially caught fire, crossed over Vorst spraying engine oil. The locals told me it was raining oil. It then sharply turned back towards Anrath and started breaking up shortly before crashing at 2.30 am on 1.Aug.
I found a drawing done by a local showing where the main parts of the plane came down. The rear turret came down quite intact in a field in Vorst a few hundred yards from the fuselage which landed near the Anrath Vorst road about 50 yards from an old roadside holy shrine which is still there. W1109 as you can see from the photos broke up in large parts many of them reasonably intact which means they were taken away within days.
The crew all died on impact some within the fuselage others strewn across the fields. Their remains were subsequently taken to the main cemetery in Krefeld, the nearest large city and around 1948 the British army moved them to the military cemetery at Reichswald where they are to this day. photos available
I got a local detectorist to check out what's left in the ground and we did find a number of small bits which were identified by a specialist in Holland. Problem is that post war the land was given a new agricultural top soil of at least 30 cms and the farmer does not plow that deep. I wrote an article in the local weekly and many people reacted some bringing stuff they'd found including old ammo but nothing much useful.
Bomber Command Museum Monthly ORB