The Lancaster Memorial in Beuningen, Netherlands is a memorial that commemorates the crew of the British Avro Lancaster LM325 SR-J that crashed on the spot during the night of 22 to 23 June 1943 in World War II. The bomber belonged to the No. 101 Squadron of the RAF. Six of the seven crew lost their lives.
Background
The Lancaster was part of a formation of 557 planes that were heading to the Ruhrgebied for a large-scale attack on the war industry around the German city of Mülheim. Two-thirds of Mülheim was estimated to be destroyed in this attack. The plane took off during the night of 22 June 1943 from the RAF Ludford Magna airbase in Lincolnshire. Its crew consisted of seven airmen:
Sgt. Jack Osborne, flight engineer, 21 years old
Sgt. Ted Williams, bomb aimer (POW) Sgt. Ron Cooper, mid upper gunner, 20 years old Sgt. Vin Sugden, rear gunner, 21 years old Flight Officer Beavan Tomkins, navigator, 30 years old Sgt. Ted Smith, wireless operator, 22 years old Sgt. Roy Waterhouse, pilot, 20 years old.
At 1:38 am on 23 June the plane was intercepted above the village of Beuningen, near the city of Nijmegen, Netherlands by a Messerschmitt Bf 110 night fighter. The Lancaster was hit and caught fire immediately. Heavily burning, it circled a few minutes around Beuningen. The crew managed to drop their bomb load in the fields around the village, preventing the loss of civilian lives. At 1:45 am the plane crashed aside the De Steeg, the road from Beuningen to the neighboring village of Wijchen, 3 km south of the village center. Many people witnessed the incident. The burning wreckage was soon closed off by German soldiers. A Dutch constable also arrived. In his report, the wrote that he saw five crew members and concluded that none of them had survived the crash.
The only survivor
Ted Williams, the bomb aimer of the plane, survived because he lay horizontally in the nose of the plane, close to the escape hatch. He was able to leave the plane in time and jumped with his parachute. Williams fainted while jumping, and due to the strong wind from the west, he drifted East towards Nijmegen. When he became conscious again, he landed in a garden in the village of Heesch, today a residence area of Nijmegen. He was offered help by the owner of the house and was given medical attention by a doctor for cuts and burn wounds. But soon the Germans found out that Williams had landed in the area, so he was escorted to the local police station and arrested. He was sent as a prisoner of war to Stalag Luft VI near the Polish-Lithuanian border. Williams would remain imprisoned until the end of the war.
Beavan Tomkins also escaped from the plane, but he did not survive the jump. He was found dead in Heesch and was later united with his deceased comrades. The six victims are buried in Uden War Cemetery.
Williams suffered all his life from having been a POW. He could not understand why just he survived. In 1950, he visited Beuningen for a commemorative ceremony. After that he intended to never return. By an extraordinary coincidence, 31 years later on a vacation in Mallorca, he met an old inhabitant from Heesch. That person's family doctor happened to be the doctor that treated Williams for his wounds after his jump. They became close friends, and in 1983 Williams revisited Nijmegen and Beuningen after all. He met, amongst other people, the doctor and owner of the house where he landed at that time. Ted Williams died in 2004.
The wreckage
The wreckage was later recovered and shredded. Only one propeller has been saved because the part fell off just before the plane hit the ground. It was overlooked by the German soldiers because it was lying in a ditch. The landowner hid the part in a shed and turned it over the municipality after the war.