Finding Uncle Charlie

This page is dedicated to my Uncle Charlie, my grandparents, Edwin and Daisy, my father, Ron and uncle, Eddie and to all those thousands of families affected by the air raids over Hannover who lost a relative from the RAF and Luftwaffe and to the families of the lost civilians of the city of Hannover. Every one of them has an ‘Uncle Charlie’

RUNNYMEDE

As a boy I was taken regularly to the Royal Air forces Memorial at Runnymede. Looking back this was no small task for my parents in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We had no car so journeyed by underground to central London where we caught a train to Windsor and a bus to Runnymede. It was always an important day, my mother bought flowers which were laid by a name on the wall C H Leech. We were told that this was Uncle Charlie, my father’s older brother, who went across to Germany in a Lancaster bomber never to return. Dad always said that Charlie was a navigator (in fact he was a flight engineer). The visits to Runnymede had a lasting effect on me and I still visit the memorial if I am in the area. I have taken my children to be sure that the memory isn’t lost. I was honoured to be invited with my father to represent the family at the 50th commemoration of the memorial in the presence of her Majesty the Queen on 17th October 2003

That he was ‘missing in action’ with no further information was poor consolation for my father’s family. There was no answer to the questions, where, how, why? This simply added to the grief that haunted my grandparents for the rest of their lives. . My grandmother, Daisy Leech, never accepted that Charlie had died and spent her life expecting him to return, convinced that he had something like memory loss. My other uncle, (Eddie), and my father (Ron), said that they had no doubt that if Charlie could return he would. We were left with a family mystery as to quite what happened to him and where his remains may be.This legacy has become for me, something to resolve, as this year on my 70th birthday my children gave me some money with the instruction to use it to go and find Uncle Charlie.

Charlie was the middle of three brothers: Eddie, Charlie and Ronnie. He was born on 24th August 1923 to Edwin and Daisy Leech of 88, Compton Buildings, Goswell Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1. I remember the flat as being just two rooms in a basement. , the eldest brother and Charlie both joined the forces; my father, Ron was too young and was meant to be evacuated. The story is that my grandmother hauled him out through the window of the train as it was departing Kings Cross station as she couldn’t let him go. He lived in the flat right through the blitz and when I questioned him about his experiences he refused to even speak about them. As a boy if I was caught going into a bomb crater in the East End of London I was severely reprimanded.

Charlie (left) and Eddie

My investigations started in 2001 (well before my 70th birthday), when I wrote to the Commonwealth War graves to see if there was any information on what happened to him. From the RAF historic division (Letter from MOD 2001. Appendix 1) and his service details (Service details accessed 2001 Appendix 2). I learned that Charlie was enlisted on 21st September 1942 so was just 19 years old, he volunteered for training as a flight engineer on 22nd March 1943,. He was awarded his flight engineer badge scoring 61%, grade B on 26th July 1943. In his photograph the flight engineer badge can be clearly seen.

On 18th October 1943 he was the flight engineer aboard a AVRO Lancaster Mark 111 with the serial number JB279 operating with 103 Squadron of Bomber Command based at Elsham Wolds Lincolnshire. .

The crew were

P/O Leonard John Hinton Pilot (Royal Australian Air Force),

Sgt Thomas Henry Davies Navigator,

Sgt Charles Henry Leech Flight Engineer,

Sgt Kenneth James Offer Air Bomber,

Sgt Thomas Frederick Stott Wireless Operator/ Air Gunner,

Sgt Tom Bell Air Gunner

Sgt Victor Barnett Hawkins Air Gunner.

They left base at 1730 (5.30pm) on 18th October 1943 to undertake operational duties at Hannover; it of course would be dark soon after they crossed the North Sea. 360 Lancaster bombers took part in the raid and 18 failed to return. Apparently the target area was covered by cloud and the pathfinders (forward aircraft that would drop flares to show the position to be bombed), were not able to locate the position of Hannover. The raid became scattered and most of the bombs fell on open countryside north and northwest of Hannover, at about 2010 hours JB279 crashed.

The last known location of JB279 being 3km north east of Nienburg and 3km east of Erichshagen. The whole crew lost their lives. The bodies of Thomas Davies, Tom Stott and Charlie Leech were never found. The bodies of the rest of the crew were interred at Sonnenborstal cemetery and when hostilities ceased were transferred to Becklingen War cemetery.

Sonneborstel church and the German war memorial now on the site

Len Hinton

Vic Hawkins

Ken Offer

Tom Bell

A site called ‘Back to Normandy’ (https://backtonormandy.org/the-history/air-force-operations/airplanes-allies-and-axis-lost/lancaster) set up to honour the dead of WW2 corroborated the information from the MoD. A further site ‘Aviation Safety Network’ (https://asn.flightsafety.org/database/) also corroborates the MOD evidence and adds that the aircraft was shot down by the crew of Hauptmann Meurer and Oberfeldwebel Scheibe of the Stab I./ NJG 1, flying a Heinkel He 210 A-O from Venlo airfield in the Netherlands. (https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/216234)

In 2001 I was unaware of eyewitness accounts that had only been published in 2001 and 2003 (after I had done my original research). The lead came from a site called ‘Aircrew Remembered’ (https://aircrewremembered.com/).. Here if you search for JB279 there is a long report which is basically a copy from the book ‘Footprints on the Sands of Time ’ by Oliver Clutton-Brock. (Clutton- Brock O. Footprints on the Sands of Time: RAF Bomber Command Prisoners of War in Germany 1939-45. 30 Jun. 2003. Appendix 4). This recounts the story of a survivor (Norman Clausen) of another crashed Lancaster JB220 at the same time and place. JB220 flew from Bourn Cambridgeshire on the same mission to Hannover. JB220 was also brought down over Erichshagen on 18th October 1943 at 2010.

The crew were

Pilot Duncan McNaught Moodie DFC (RCAF).

Sgt Leslie Edmund Melbourne Flight Engineer,

Sgt James Thomas Bundle DFM Navigator,

Sgt Norman Clausen DFM Air Bomber, Sgt Thomas Edward Stamp Wireless Operator/ Air gunner,

Sgt Leonard Arthur Drummond Air gunner,

Sgt Frederick Arthur Hughes Air gunner.

All were killed when the plane came down except Norman Clausan who manged to parachute out, lost consciousness at altitude but fortunately came round just before he hit the ground. Clausen is clear he parachuted to an area on the outskirts of Erichshagen. Clausen was captured after escaping the wreckage though woods and spent the war at Stalag Muhlberg, Elbe. (https://aircrewremembered.com/duncan-moodie.html)

The crew of JB220 are interred at Becklingen immediately to the left of thr crew of JB279

Norman Clausen also recounted his story to Mel Rolfe for the book ‘Flying into Hell’. (Rolfe M 2001 Flying into Hell: The Bomber Command Offensive As Seen Through the Experiences of Twenty Crews. Appendix 6). At 21000 feet JB 220 was flying north east of Hannover and was one of the pathfinders. The rear gunner Arthur Hughes shouted that there was another aircraft nearby and to take evasive manoeuvres. In the process the two Lancasters JB 220 and JB279 collided. My assumption is that JB279 was being pursued by or had already been hit by the Heinkel. One should remember it was dark and the aircraft would be flying with no lights.

Clausen’s report states that (Charlie’s) Lancaster JB279 lost both wings and its nose and crashed to the ground. Charlie Leech, Tom Davies and Tom Stott managed to parachute out and survived the collision. Post war the father of Tom Stott was so distraught that he hired private investigators to discover what happened to his only son. Tom Stott appears to have escaped, joined some Polish prisoners of war, was caught by Germans escaped again and made his way to the Russian border. There is a report that he died in hospital from TB.

They were told that although Charles Leech and Tom Davies survived the explosion they were captured soon after, shot and their bodies flung into the still burning Lancaster. This is corroborated by Clausen who said he heard two shots as he was running away. Interestingly ‘Flying into Hell’ refers to Charlie Leach (sic), he was always known to people as Charlie and (having the same surname) I know well that people often spell Leech as Leach. This would indicate to me that Charlie was known to Norman Clausen and that he may have seen the shooting.

In a way it is good to finally have an account of how Charlie died, and in many ways I am pleased that I never had to tell my father or uncle what had happened to their brother. It explains the lack of any remains and the apparent disappearance, as he would have been consumed by the burning wreckage. Or he is one of those many graves to an unknown airman.

The destruction of Hannover

To my shame I had no idea that Hannover had been flattened by the bombing raids. I had heard of Dresden but had no idea that Hannover had suffered the same fate. Hannover was a Renaissance masterpiece with opera houses, theatres, mansions, a large university, palaces and gardens (as the seat of the Hannover family who became the British Royal family). I genuinely thought there was a pact not to bomb historical sites; clearly I was wrong.

Aegidienkirche, built in 1347 replaces a church already on the site that goes back to at least the 10th century. It was destroyed by bombing raids in 1943 along with 90 percent of the city. Much of the medieval old town, the Old Market church and other ancient churches were reconstructed post war. In 1952 Aegidienkirche was opened as a war memorial and left as it was to show the destruction. I have visited Coventry cathedral, and the experience is similar; although it jars when you realise that this church in Hannover was not destroyed by the Luftwaffe but the RAF and Uncle Charlie would have been part of those raids. I had a romantic view of the RAF and Charlie as a child, it had never occurred to me that this is what he was going to Hannover to do. 6782 civilians were killed in the raids on Hannover. Hannover is now twinned with Hiroshima.

Finding the Crash Site

In August 2024 I had a reply to an enquiry from Kristina Kowak the curator of the museum at Nienberg. There were no records of a Lancaster crash at the museum, but she had passed my enquiry to Patricia Berger at Nienburg Town Hall. She had spoken to the mayor of Erichshagen who recalled a similar request some years ago. No eye witnesses are still alive but there was a clue that a Lancaster had fallen near the sports field. I was given the name of a street ‘Hinter den Hulsen’. The wing apparently fell a little further away in ‘Celler Strasse’. I am indebted to Patricia Berger for this clue. Lancaster JB 279 had indeed lost its wings so Clausman’s report may be correct.

Some 25 kilometers north west of Hannover is Nienberg. It is a delightful small market town. Outside the church there was a large replica of the painting of Guernica by Picasso showing the suffering of one village during the Spanish Civil War.

Neinberg now spreads to the north where new housing has been built in what is now a suburb, Erichshagen. If Clausen is correct Erichshagen is where the Lancasters fellwe were looking for a sports field. We found the sports field mentioned but there was nothing to see of any significance, new housing made it difficult to see or get to local farmland. There are many sports fields in the area, the search seemed fruitless. There is a sports centre some half a kilometre away from ‘Hinter den Hulsen’ at Holtorf on a road called ‘Dobben’. The farmland is very neatly placed with rectangular fields surrounded by lines of tress; there is plenty of woodland as described by Clausen. There is an unusual patch of scrubland just to the north of the sports hall by a playground. The scrubland took away a corner of the otherwise rectangular field and seemed to have no purpose. It looked like a small mound and the vegetation reminded me of the bomb sites in the East End of London in the late 1950s. It was the only patch of ground that showed any disturbance from the otherwise flat and neatly ploughed fields in the area. I remember saying that surely a crashed Lancaster site wouldn’t be that easy to find, and in retrospect have my doubts that we found anything. It is half a kilometre from where were told to look and without other evidence such as magnetometer readings it is difficult to know quite what we were looking at. At the time we walked away and went to search the area again but were drawn back as there was nothing else that we could see. It seemed to be a small mound.

I am a scientist, so not usually prone to fanciful things like ‘signs’ but as we approached the mound a bright red squirrel shot across the gap in the hedge we were about to go though. I took a small poppy cross with me and started walking into the scrubland with great care, uncertain if there may not be a ditch or bog. It was a clear blue sky and as I walked into the scrub there was an enormous clap of thunder. A few metres on in the scrub and nettles I discovered a moss and scrub covered mound. It was about forty cm high and eighty cm wide. It could easily be a tree trunk but the shape convinced me that I had stumbled across what was left of the top of a Lancaster. Google earth certainly shows something of the right shape. At the time I was totally convinced we had found Uncle Charlies’ Lancaster, in retrospect less so, and fear it was wishful thinking. More archaeology would need to be done to ascertain what the mound comprises.; apart from anything else there were two Lancasters to be found, unless one had been totally destroyed by the fire this was just one. A google earth search shows a distinct feature that could well be the fuselage of a Lancaster and another exists in the next field, so a return visit may be needed. Nevertheless. I placed a cross, even if not exact we were within a square kilometre. Uncle Charlie is no longer in an unmarked grave.

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