Well, given that Bubes survived he'll have more potential hits. Have you thought about tracking him down?
My grandfather (Edwin Ronald McCunnell) was the rear-gunner in a Handley Page Halifax (HR724 NP-W) so it may have been an easier bit of research as the crew roster was an obvious starting place.
Sgt. Basil Christopher Wordsworth (Pilot)
P/O. Frank Oliver (Navigator)
Sgt. Edward Thurlow (Air Bomber)
P/O. Hugh Telfer Wooldridge (Wireless Operator)
Sgt. Reginald John Cook (Mid Upper Gunner)
Sgt. Edwin Ronald McCunnell (Rear Gunner)
Sgt. Roger Victor Pallant (Flight Engineer)
We found that the plane was only on the second mission. It had completed a mission against Dusseldorf on 11/6/43 and had taken part in a raid against Bochum on the following night, but the plane was damaged by shrapnel from a heavy flak barrage.
The wireless operator (Hugh Telfer Wooldridge) had been seriously injured by the flak which had also destroyed the radio. The aircraft had stalled a couple of engines and was flying low in an attempt to limp home, a task made more difficult by heavy fog that left no navigable landmarks.
The pilot (Basil Christopher Wordsworth) believed that they must be over the North Sea due to altitude and a flat mist bank and made preparations to ditch, only to abort at the last moment after seeing a church steeple through the mist. The evac order was given, and my grandfather spun his tail canopy to the exit position and fell out. His foot caught in the canopy and he passed out whilst being dragged by the plane. Somehow his chute deployed and pulled him clear, breaking his ankle in the process.
No-one else got out before the plane landed. The pilot managed to land the plane wheels up, but it skidded across a field and hit a dyke and broke in two, killing all the crew located on the lower level of the plane. Thurlow, Oliver and Wooldridge are currently buried in the grounds of the church they'd missed in the village of Ulft in Holland.
The plane caught fire whilst the remaning crew tried to get clear, with Cook getting heavily burned and Pallant suffering burns to his hands. All the survivors were promptly captured and Cook was moved to a hospital in Amsterdam where he later died from his injuries. He is buried there.
My grandfather was found in a field by a farmer and taken to the local pub and given a stiff drink whilst they waited for the Germans to come and collect him.
My grandfather, Basil Wordsworth and Roger Pallant were eventually moved to Stalag-Luft VI in Heyderkrug (now known as Šilutė in Lithuania).
When my parents visited Ulft, it made the local paper and as a result some people that had witnessed the crash came forward and gave them some souvenirs, such as a perspex shard from the canopy and a navigation compass that had belonged to Frank Oliver.
The perspex fragment was given to Basil Wordsworth, now living in Cape Town in South Africa. My parents have visited him in November 2005 and iirc he's still doing well. The navigation compass was sent on to Frank Oliver's nephew.
The most unexpected development has been a dutch facebook page about the crash showing various findings and recovered artifacts - these can be seen at
http://www.facebook.com/halifaxulft. I've been told its by a documentary maker - if it is i hope the youtube video isn't one of his productions
