On the night of 26th / 27th November 1943 the crew of this 429 Squadron aircraft took off from Leeming airfield at 16.48hrs to undertake an operational flight to bomb Stuttgart but the port outer failed soon after leaving the ground. A problem with another engine then resulted in the pilot making a belly landing in a field at 17.07hrs near Salmon House Farm, Snape, a few miles west of the airfield. A fire developed in one of the engines though this was extinguished. All on board escaped injury. This crew were posted to 429 Squadron during October 1943 and all appear to have been posted away by the end of May 1944.
Pilot - F/Sgt E C Baker RCAF (R/142367).
Flight Engineer - Sgt Roylance Sydney King RAFVR (1873548).
Navigator - F/Sgt Walter Henry Killner RNZAF (NZ.422660).
Bomb Aimer - Sgt A J J B Marion RCAF (R/143869).
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - F/Sgt A E Bryant RAF.
Air Gunner - Sgt Harold Gordon RAFVR (1591936).
Air Gunner - Sgt David Hamilton Bain Sinclair RAFVR (1822239).
F/Sgt Bryant appears to have been replaced as wireless operator in this generally fixed crew by Sgt M.Sampson in early December 1943. Bryant may have served with 427 Squadron in the last weeks of the war and possibly transffered to the RCAF, serving post-war in Canada.
Roylance King received a commission to the rank of P/O on probation on 8th November 1944. Following service with 429 Squadron he later served with 578 Squadron and also 466 Squadron. On 9th April 1945 while flying with 466 Squadron on an operational flight to Hamburg in Halifax LW172 and in trying to locate the airfield at Driffield on their return in fog the Halifax flew into rising ground just west of the airfield, near Kirkburn Grange on the Yorkshire Wolds. He and all his then crew were sadly killed in this accident just a month before the end of the War in Europe.
By August 1944 Harold Gordon had been posted to 428 Squadron. On 30th August 1944 he was flying in Lancaster KB709 on ops to Stettin when the aircraft probably crashed into the Baltic Sea with the loss of his then crew. F/Sgt Gordon was still just nineteen years old and is buried in Falkenberg Forest Cemetery, Sweden.
By October 1944 Walter Killner was also serving with 428 Squadron. On 14th October 1944 he was flying in Lancaster KB780 on Ops to Duisburg when the aircraft crashed in the target area with the loss of his then crew. P/O Killner was thirty five years old and he is now buried in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery.
Marion was part of the crew of a Liberator that flew to Australia in January 1945 carrying Mr Arthur Drakeford, who was the Australian Air Minister and minister responsible for the RAAF during WW2. I have yet to fully identify him.
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