Date: 17/18th June 1944
Unit: No.115 Squadron
Type: Lancaster I
Serial: HK559
Coded: A4-H
Location: Gannes, France.
Pilot: P/O. John Alan Traill 423186 R.A.A.F. Age; 21, Killed
Fl/Eng: Sgt. Douglas Albert Dawson 574270 R.A.F. Age; 22, Killed
Nav: Fl/Sgt. Ian Harrison Smith 423913 R.A.A.F. Age; 21, Killed
Air/Bmr: Fl/Sgt. John William Van Cooten 426716 R.A.A.F. Age; 22, Killed
W/Op: W/O. Peter Duff 1059197 R.A.F.V.R. Age; 34, Killed
Air/Gnr(Mid.U.G): Sgt. Ernest Edwin Stapley 1896471 R.A.F.V.R. Age; 35, Killed
Air/Gnr(Rear.G): Sgt. Kenneth Edgar Laxton 1816757 R.A.F.V.R. Age; 20, Killed
REASON FOR LOSS:
In the early hours of 18 June 1944, ten Mk I and four Mk III Avro Lancaster bombers of 115 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, based at Witchford in Cambridgeshire, undertook an operation to attack railway installations at Montdidier (Somme) in northern France. Each aircraft carried eighteen 500lb general purpose bombs. All but one returned safely, the casualty being Mk I Lancaster, serial number HK559 and identifying code A4-H (painted on the sides, split by the RAF roundels). HK559 was apparently hit by anti-aircraft fire near to the target and crashed just outside the village of Gannes (Oise), a few kilometres to the south west, with the loss of all seven crew. According to the Gannes stationmaster, who witnessed the crash, the aircraft exploded and burst into flames on impact, with a further bomb explosion triggered by the fire several hours later. The crash may have been on the outward or return journey, as cloud conditions at the target caused the instruction to be given for all aircraft to return without dropping their bombs
Bomber Command suffered huge casualties in World War II, with over 8000 aircraft destroyed and more than 55,000 aircrew killed, but HK559 was its only operational loss on that date.
The remains of the crew were buried in a collective grave in the village cemetery. There are now individual Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones on the grave, and there were official commemoration ceremonies in 1994 and 2004.
The account which follows has been developed from information supplied by, among others, relatives of all seven crewmen and by French people in Gannes and nearby. It is based on material first assembled by Dominique Lecomte of Erquery (Oise), augmented as and when extra documents and photographs came to light.
Above left to right: John Alan Traill. Douglas Albert Dawson. Ian Harrison Smith.
Above left to right: John William Van Cooten. Peter Duff. Ernest Edwin Stapley. Kenneth Edgar Laxton.
Lancaster crews were formed in two stages during the training programme:
At an Operational Training Unit, all but the flight engineer came together. The process is sometimes described as all the trainees being put in a hangar, and by drifting around for part of a day, self-selecting into congenial teams of six specialists. In reality, it could take longer and some direction from above could be given.
At the subsequent Heavy Conversion Unit, a flight engineer, who had taken a separate course of training, was attached to the established crew. In the case of the seven who died at Gannes there was a further distinction between the flight engineer and the others – while the rest were wartime enlistees in the RAF or RAAF, Douglas Dawson had chosen the RAF as a career in 1938 when he enrolled as an airframe apprentice, aged 16. His ambition to fly was realized only in the later stages of the war when four-engined bombers required a flight engineer in the crew.
However they came together, the crew who died at Gannes were posted in late May 1944 to 115 Squadron at Witchford, by this time equipped only with Lancasters, and flew operations from there. Remarkably, there was another Sergeant Douglas Dawson flying with 115 Squadron at the same time, this one a member of the RCAF. He was a rear gunner who also flew to Montdidier on 17/18 June. He and the rest of his crew were killed three months later on 17 September during an operation to Moerdijk in Holland, and are buried in the nearby village of Strijen, about 30 kilometres to the south of Rotterdam. Tracking this other Douglas Dawson’s history was made harder by his being commissioned some time between the Montdidier and Moerdijk operations - he was a Pilot Officer with a new service number at the time of his death. And there was another Canadian air gunner called Dawson at Witchford in 1944, this one too killed in action later in the year with the rest of his crew.
It sometimes happened that new pilots flew a mission as Second Pilot, displacing the flight engineer from his collapsible seat, to see how experienced crews worked together. There is no record that John Traill did so. What is shown in 115 Squadron’s Operations Record Book (ORB) of the time, now in the UK National Archives, is that for him and his crew the Montdidier raid was their fifth operation:
Date (Night of) Target serial No. Code Losses
30/31 May Boulogne ND913 A4-M 0 from 10
2/3 June Wissant ND760 A4-K 0 from 15
14/15 June Le Havre ND913 A4-M 0 from 22
15/16 June Valenciennes ND913 A4-M 1 from 20
17/18 June Montdidier HK559 A4-H 1 from 14
This detailed official record disagrees with a statement in the brief account of Douglas Dawson’s life which appeared in a local (Ossett) newspaper when he was reported missing, and again when he was presumed killed in action. According to the statement, he flew to Caen on D-Day, 6 June 1944, presumably this being told to his family when he was on leave with them sometime after the event. The ORB shows no operations carried out by Douglas’s regular crew other than those listed above, nor any with him as a member of another crew, though there was an operation with 24 aircraft from 115 Squadron to Ouistreham, the port of Caen, on the night of 5/6 June. It is possible that he flew on this as a stand-in flight engineer for another crew, maybe at the last minute, and for some reason, human error being most likely, this was not properly recorded. ORBs are known to be less than 100% accurate, but typically this means an error in an aircraft’s serial number or an airman’s name spelt wrongly. Completely omitting an aircraft and crew from the account of an operation seems highly unlikely.
The Crash
The following photograph, looking west, was taken on 19 June 1944. The aircraft crashed into the house, just east of the station, and tore off the roof. Refugees from Le Havre were living there, but nobody inside was killed. Behind to the left is the station, and to the right the brickworks. The village is a kilometre or so further to the west.
The next photograph was taken in 2007, looking north. The railway can be seen to the left, with the now unstaffed and hardly used station just off the edge of the picture. The house which was damaged is the one with a red roof just left of centre, the others nearby are postwar. The crash was in the field across the lane, a bit to the east, though now there is no sign of this, from the air or on the ground. More than 60 years later, small fragments of the Lancaster still turn up.
With part of the aircraft buried and the rest unidentifiable fragments, and the remains of the crew having no means of identification, it took a long time for the non-return of HK559 to Witchford and the funeral at Gannes to be associated. Thus, first the crew’s families were told that they were missing, then after some months without news that they were presumed killed in action, then eventually that they had died and been buried at Gannes.
The Funeral
The next series of photographs are of the airmen’s funeral on 21 June 1944 at Gannes, the procession leaving the church in the centre of the village for the cemetery just outside to the north.
The Grave
What follows is a selection of photographs taken in the cemetery, showing how the grave has changed over the years.
In 1948 there was a single cross carrying two commemorative boards. The upper, official, one gave the crew’s service numbers, names and ranks, the lower one, older and created locally, showed only the names (with three errors of initial and one of surname) and informal ranks (“CAPT.” for the pilot and “SERG.” for the rest of the crew). Both were in the same sequence as in the squadron’s operations record book, this being pilot, navigator, bomb aimer. wireless operator, mid-upper gunner, rear gunner and flight engineer.
Also in 1948 there were eight identical smaller crosses to the left of the crew’s one, four with helmets resting on top. These were the graves of French soldiers killed in 1940 when fighting the German invasion forces, who would have reached the area of Gannes in late May or early June, as they reached Amiens on 18 May and occupied it on 23 May, occupied Rouen on 12 June and entered Paris on 14 June.
In 1952 the newer board had gone but the older one remained, for reasons unknown. The single cross was different from four years before and had nine lines of text, not possible to make out on the original photograph taken by Bill Smith, even with a magnifying glass. His letter gave some information on this:
…at present the names are not to [sic] clear as apart from the war grave cross which has the names in tiny print the other plaque which the mayor put on himself being of wood is not very clear.
From the length of each line it can be deduced that the names on the cross were in the same order as on the board, topped and tailed with something like “IN MEMORY OF” and “REST IN PEACE”. It seems likely that this formed the official marking of the grave until individual headstones were installed some time later.
It can be seen that by this time, at least the rightmost of the other crosses had gone, and presumably all of them. Nobody from Gannes in the armed forces had been killed even as late as May 1944, so it can be presumed that the dead soldiers were from other areas and their remains had been taken back there, or to a military cemetery, by 1952.
The photograph shown above, taken in 2008, shows the commemorative plaque from the 50th anniversary ceremony, and the glazed panel containing photographs of the crew which was installed in 2007. Some time after 1964, the grave has been kerbed and the original brick wall has been replaced by one of concrete panels.
Many letters were written by and to the families. Two, involving Alan and Katharine Traill, the pilot’s parents, are shown by clicking onto the link, one partly and one in full. On 25 January 1946, Alan Traill wrote to the Casualty Section of the Department of Air in Melbourne, asking about John’s death. Traill letters click here.
Burial Details:
John Alan Traill Gannes Communal Cemetery. Collective grave.
Son of Dr. Alan James and Katharine Mary, of Burwood, New South Wales, Australia.
Douglas Albert Dawson Gannes Communal Cemetery. Collective grave.
Son of Albert and Alice of Ossett, Yorkshire.
Ian Harrison Smith Gannes Communal Cemetery. Collective grave.
Son of William Harrison and Clyda Ann of North Bondi, New South Wales, Australia.
John William Van Cooten Gannes Communal Cemetery. Collective grave.
Son of William John Fraser and Lucy , of South Brisbane, Queensland. Australia.
Peter Duff Gannes Communal Cemetery. Collective grave.
Son of Alexander and Margaret, of Dundee.
Ernest Edwin Stapley Gannes Communal Cemetery. Collective grave.
Son of Frank Stuart and Frances Sarah, husband of Dorothy Rose, Wood Green, M/Sex.
Kenneth Edgar Laxton Gannes Communal Cemetery. Collective grave.
Son of John William and Lizzie, of Hall Green, Birmingham.
Information and photographs supplied by Ian Duff - nephew of Peter Duff (Wireless Operator) killed on this aircraft. With thanks to the following: Bill Chorley - "Bomber Command Losses Vol 3", Theo Boiten - "German Nightfighter War Diaries Vol 2", Martin Middlebrook "Bomber Command War Diaries". The Commonwealth Graves Commission
