Drama
in the night Received from Gunnar Hounsgaard
På dansk 15 SEP 2011 Propeller from
HAL LL235 after wreath
laying on 23 APR 2010
HAL LL235 crashed about
here at Tranerodde on 23 April 1944. See Monument
erected
here.
Article from Jydske Tidende on 30 April 1972:
Drama in the Night in the Air off Als
Sports divers
from Sønderborg help clearing up
events off Traner-odde 28
years ago
By J. Vaupell Christensen
The sea covers up all tracks - the British
author Nicholas Monsarrat wrote a number of years ago.
Then it was an approximate truth but due to the efficient scuba diving
equipment of our time it is possible today for people practising this sport
to move over the seabed and watch remnants of the past. It may be objects
from the stone age, but there may also be things that silently bear witness
to great dramas of later wars.
In the autumn of 1967 members of
Sønderborg Sports Diving Club found on
the bottom of the
Lillebælt about 200 metres off the Traner-odde Lighthouse a number of
parts of a big plane from
World War 2. Rather soon it was established that it was a 4-engined allied
plane that crashed
into the sea after an aerial battle one evening in the spring of 1944.
Conversations with local
residents also made it clear that there had been only one survivor, but
apart from that nobody
really knew what had happened.
Investigations, assisted by private citizens as
well as helpful people from authorities, uncovered the
story of the end of an aircraft near the coast of Als. A story not different
from thousands of similar
cases in Europe and Asia in the years 1939 - 1945, but it took place here
where we have our daily
lives.
Flight Lieutenant
E. N. (Ted)
Thompson from the Royal Air Force was not a
novice in his job as the pilot of a bomber, when he met his destiny over Als.
He had flown many operations with his
Halifax
Mk-II aircraft. His last sortie with it 5 weeks before the crash near
Traner-odde also became the last
one for a couple of his crew mates.
On 16 March 1944 Thompson and his crew
participated in an operation over France, and here their plane was hit so
severely that 2 of the 7 airmen were injured, one
of them so seriously that he died while the plane was still over France. The
other one was hit in his face. Thompson made a quick choice and decided to
try getting
back to England with the damaged plane. He wanted to take the wounded airman
to medical treatment in England and he wanted to bring his perished crew
mate
home, so that he could rest in English soil. Nothing would have been easier
for Thompson than to choose a forced landing in France, be taken prisoner
and then later return from captivity, but Thompson made his choice to save
his mates and in that way he fell out of the frying pan into the fire 5
weeks later. Thompson managed to
fly back with the damaged plane. For that performance he was awarded the
British medal for acts of gallantry, the
Distinguished Flying Cross.
Thompson and the 4 remaining members of the old crew were now joined by 2
new men, Pilot Officer
McClelland and Flying Officer Robbins
- and then they were fit for fight again. The destroyed plane was replaced
by a Halifax
Mk-V, a later version of the welknown aircraft, but basically identical with
Thompson's old plane.
We do not know how many missions they flew with the new plane, but we know
that on 23 April 1944 Thompson's Squadron (No. 77) was detailed to lay mines
in the Baltic Sea, more accurately on the position 54.48N og 12.42E, an area
south of Møn. However, Thompson's plane never reached the Baltic Sea and a
number of other planes in the operation were also shot down on the flight
over Denmark.
Thompson took off from his base in England at about 20.00 hours on 23 April.
He set course across the North Sea to reach the Baltic Sea via South Jutland,
but
Luftwaffe were on the ball that night. The radar warning systems in the
British planes soon told the crews that German night fighters were searching
them, and one of
the planes in which the alarm was heard was Thompson's. A
Messerschmitt
Bf-110 fighter from NJG-3 caught the Halifax somewhere west of Als and a
duel in the air began. In the end the Halifax caught fire and it was hit by
an explosion over Svenstrup. The plane crashed into the Lillebælt about 200
metres north east of Traner-odde Lighthouse
(here)
at 23.20 hours on 23 April 1944.
Observed the air crash
Fisherman Christian Hansen observed the air crash from Torup Strand and at
once he sailed out in his boat to help if possible. He heard cries of help
at sea an in spite
of the darkness he managed to find the sole survivor from
the crash, Sergeant D. Harris. According to Harris
also another member of the crew had managed to get out
of the plane, but he
drifted away in the darkness. Harris was perished with cold after his stay
in the cold water and he was to be taken to the hospital in Sønderborg in
an
ambulance. The then police constable Hans Lind from Sønderborg had showed up
and he joined Harris in the ambulance. However, soldiers from the German
garrison in Sønderborg were heading for Traner-odde. They stopped the
ambulance near Bro and Harris was taken to Sønderborg Barracks. Police
constable Lind had
to join Harris to the barracks, as the Germans found it a
little hard to understand the effort to take Harris to the hospital instead
of handing him over to the German authorities, but after an hour Lind was
allowed to go.
(Addition by Gunnar Hounsgaard on the newspaper cutting: Agergaard, Danfoss
carried him on his shoulders to the beach, in water reaching his shoulders.)
What later happened to Harris remains uncertain. It has not been possible to
trace him, but there is a chance that he made it home in 1945.
(D.M.M. Harris is listed in Air
Force PoWs 1939 to 1945 as a prisoner of war in L6 -
Stalag Luft VI
Heydekrug - Stalag Luft 6
- Stalag
Luft 6 POW Camp. AS)
On 27 May Thompson was found in the water at the
crash site. On 31 May Sergeant Redall
was found on the beach near Himmark. Both of them were buried in
Aabenraa. McClelland drifted
ashore near Assens, and Flight Sergeant
Harvey near Faaborg and they were buried in these
towns.
Sergeant Armstrong was
never found and neither was Robbins, officially. However, there are
indications that
Robbins drifted ashore near Havnbjerg Wood and
that he
from was taken to Aabenraa and buried there as an unidentified airman. In their
hunt for souvenirs thoughtless people had removed his ID tags.
Right after the air crash parts of the wreckage and the mines on board were
recovered, but today debris from the big plane is scattered over the seabed
off the
lighthouse - silent memorials to the drama one night in the spring
of 1944 off the coast of Als. By now the sports divers have visited the
wreckage several times. Lately they have fetched one of the big propeller
blades from the site. Now the propeller blade is incorporated into the
collection of objects on display in and outside their club house on the
harbour at Verdens Ende, Sønderborg. (The propeller blade was picked up from
the seabed on 9 April 1972. The photo of the propeller in 2010 is from
Stevning School on Als. AS)
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