Crew members of Lancaster KB738
The Crew of "Dorothy"
Sometime prior to September 19th of 1944, F/O How and his crew were posted to 419 squadron. (Often misspelled as "Howe" in the ORB along with various misspellings of Hubley's name.) The crew had been together through No. 82 O.T.U. and No. 1664 C.U and now after completion of his turn at 2nd. Pilot, F/O How and his crew started their service lifes together for 18 operations. (Tail gunner F/O Springstein missed one of the operations with his crew.)The crew took part in a wide variety of operations including a raid on the U-boat pens at Bergen, which gave their tail gunner Springstein a view of one of the U-boats being hit numerous times. And although the ORB does not tend to show much happening to the crew on their raids into enemy territory, they did have their moments.
On October 14th 18 of 419's Lancasters took off for a raid on Duisberg, the weather was miserable poor viability, heavy icing and cold caused their API device to freeze up, but they continued on to their objective anyway.
A Run in with a Night Fighter
On the night of November 2nd while on an operation to Dusseldorf, Rear Gunner F/O Springstein saw a single engine aircraft coming in at them from the Port quarter out of the light section of the night and called for a Corkscrew to Port . Springstein fired off a long burst as the enemy aircraft came to about 400 yards of the Lancaster until his guns jammed. As soon as the attack was announced F/S Tait in the Mid-Upper gun checked for any additional attacking aircraft. No more was seen of the night fighter after it broke off the attack and headed off into the night of the upper Starboard side.
"Dorothy's 68th. Operation
The night of December 27/28 1944 KB738 "Dorothy" was on a raid to the rail yards at Opladen, North of Cologne. There is no exact known cause for the loss of the crew. It was down to three possible causes; flak, a mid-air collision or being hit by bombs falling from another aircraft.The aircraft crashed at Leverkusen-Wiesdorf were the crew were originally buried, prior to their being moved to Rheinberg War Cemet
In Regards to the Crew Photo
The photo of the crew shown above was most likely taken while at HCU. The ranks shown on the men point to this date. As their ranks listed in the ORB for their first operation show them with higher ranks.The Navigator in the center of the photo may or may not be Victor Garratt, on another site he is listed as Victor Zoratti. F/O Zoratti was killed in a mid-air collision in July of 1944.
There is no references to either Navigators with this crew in my records. It would be interesting if the man could be identified. He appears to have a decoration ribbon beneath his Navigator's brevet, neither F/O Garratt or Zoratti could be found on lists of medal recipients during this time period.
