The Wartime Memories Project
The Second World War - Day by Day.

Home>Date Index


This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.


If you enjoy this site

please consider making a donation.




    Site Home

    WW2 Home

    Add Stories

    WW2 Search

    Library

    Help & FAQs


 WW2 Features

    Airfields

    Allied Army

    Allied Air Forces

    Allied Navy

    Axis Forces

    Home Front

    Battles

    Prisoners of War

    Allied Ships

    Women at War

    Those Who Served

    Day-by-Day

    Library

    The Great War

 Submissions

    Add Stories

    Time Capsule

    TWMP on Facebook



    Childrens Bookshop

 FAQ's

    Help & FAQs

    Glossary

    Volunteering

    Contact us

    News

    Bookshop

    About


Advertisements











World War 2 Two II WW2 WWII 1939 1945



Remembering those who died this day.

  • Baker Frank Ernest. P/O. (d.12th Mar 1945)
  • Carter Donavan Yukin. Flt. Sgt. (d.12th Mar 1945)
  • Forster James Herbert. Tpr. (d.12th March 1945)
  • O'Brien George John Patrick. F/Sgt. (d.12th March 1945)
  • Oats Victor Rundle. Wing Cdr. (d.12th Mar 1945)

The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List



The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.

Announcements



  • The Wartime Memories Project has been running for 24 years. If you would like to support us, a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting and admin or this site will vanish from the web.
  • 28th March 2024 - Please note we currently have a huge backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263784 your information is still in the queue, please do not resubmit, we are working through them as quickly as possible.
  • Looking for help with Family History Research?   Please read our Family History FAQ's
  • The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors. If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web.
    If you enjoy this site

    please consider making a donation.


Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the War? Our Library contains an ever growing number diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text.



We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates.

If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page.


Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to WW2. We would like to obtain digital copies of any documents or photographs relating to WW2 you may have at home.

If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted. World War 1 One ww1 wwII second 1939 1945 battalion
Did you know? We also have a section on The Great War. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.



Want to know more about the 12th of March 1945?


There are:23 items tagged 12th of March 1945 available in our Library

  These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War.




Stories from 12th March 1945





Wing Cdr. Victor Rundle Oats. Royal Air Force, 21 Squadron. (d.12th Mar 1945)

Victor Rundle Oats took over command of 21 Squadron on 9 February 1945. He flew a number of missions with his navigator, Flight Sergeant F. C. Gubbings, in the Munich and Cologne areas, at night. The squadron took part in Opertion Clarion, the destruction of German traffic centers in smaller cities; the marshalling yard in Hildesheim was targeted in the afternoon of February 22, 1945. Due to good weather and clear sight the marshalling yard was heavily damaged, the city itself received considerable damage: 102 houses were completely destroyed, and 106 houses and two churches (St. Bernward's Church and St. Lamberti Church) suffered severe damage. 998 houses and four churches, among them the Cathedral and Saint Michael's Church were slightly damaged. About 250 people were killed. One aircraft and crew was lost during the raid.

On 12 March 1945 the squadron was sent out to bomb road and rail communications East of the Ruhr leading to Magdeburg. Oats' and Gubbings' Mosquito VI, no. SZ963, failed to return. Eyewitness accounts stated that Mosquito attacked the Frankenberger Bahnhof (Railway station) and then the Thonet Werk (Industrial). During this attack it was noted that the aircraft was on fire and flying very low. The crew must have realised the danger and Oats tried desperately to gain altitude so that they would have sufficient height to bale out. Instead, the aircraft flew on a curved course towards Willesdorf but crashed on the Linnerberg, between Bottendorf and Willesdorf. The crew were found the next day and laid to rest by an old Oak tree at the Linner Mill. The two crew members were later exhumed and re-buried at Hanover War Cemetery.

During the potato harvest of 1963 a small watch was found, engraved with the initials V. R. Oats RAF 15.4.36. on the backplate. This watch had stopped at 10 minutes past 12. The people who found the watch were the Doels family, who contacted the then priest of the village Dr. Gustav Hammann who was a keen and well known local history researcher. He contacted the families of Oats and Gubbings and in 1969, Lieutenant Colonel Gilesa Oats, Victor's brother, travelled to Germany to receive the watch. During 1994 searches were made of the crash site area. A year later one of the engines was recovered and, a year later, the second. About three tons of material has been recovered so far.

There is a memorial to Victor Rundle Oats in the parish church of St Just-in-Penwith, Cornwall, his home town.

Pete Joseph



F/Sgt. George John Patrick O'Brien. Royal Australian Air Force, 106 Squadron. (d.12th March 1945)

George O'Brien, was a Flight Sergeant in the Royal Australian Air Force. He was killed on the 12th March 1945 with 106 Squadron when Lancaster I RA503 ZN-B took off from Metheringham at 1330 to bomb Dortmund and was lost without trace. Aged 21 he was the son of Mr and Mrs H J O'Brien of Petersham, New South Wales, Australia.

Part of a force of 1108 aircraft, 748 Lancasters, 292 Halifaxes and 68 Mosquitoes, tasked to attack Dortmund. In what was to be the final raid on this target by Bomber Command. This force surpassed the previous days record for most aircraft dispatched, as well as eclipsing the previous single bomb tonnage record to be dropped on a single target. Bombing once again through heavy cloud and using sky marking some 4,851 tones of bombs and incendiaries feel on the center and southern districts of the city. Local reports are not available and it is possible that none were submitted. A British post war investigation team researching the bombing in Dortmund,recorded in volume three of the Official History that 'This final raid stopped production so effectively that it would have been many months before any substantial recovery could have occurred.

Two aircraft, were lost, 2 Lancasters. The aircraft was lost without trace. All of the crew have no known graves and are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial.

Greg Hornby



P/O. Frank Ernest Baker. Royal Air Force, 106 Squadron. (d.12th Mar 1945)

Frank Baker died in action just two years before I was born so he was the uncle I never met. Frank was the pilot of Lancaster RA508, flying from RAF Metheringham, which was the only aircraft lost without trace in the bombing raid on Dortmund on 12th of March 1945 in which more than a thousand aircraft took part. The loss card for RA508 merely refers to radio contact having been lost over the North Sea. However, the log of another pilot involved in the raid refers to a Lancaster, which could only have been RA508, being hit by a bomb dropped from another aircraft in cloud and a passage in the book, Tail End Charlies, refers to an identical incident in the same raid. RA508 was destroyed over Dortmund in an accident due to poor visibility that would now be called a blue on blue incident.











Can you help us to add to our records?

The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them


Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area?

If so please let us know.

Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice.




Celebrate your own Family History

Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc.

Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.














The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items.

The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.

If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.



Hosted by:

The Wartime Memories Project Website

is archived for preservation by the British Library





Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
- All Rights Reserved

We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.