Sgt. Arthur Bradley Woodvine
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve 61 Squadron
from:Rhodesia
(d.11th Apr 1944)
My uncle Flt. Sgt. Arthur Bradley Woodvine was killed in action on 11th of April 1944. His photo was likely one of the last taken of him about a month before his Lancaster JA695 was shot down by a German night fighter. The brass plaque featured is located at the Botanical Gardens, Australia Remembers Memorial in Brisbane, Australia which was opened in 1995, where all his living relatives now live.
One of my first contacts was from a group/club in Belgium that searches for missing aircraft from all airforces, and they advised me they had contact with the relative of one of the other members of the flight crew of Lancaster JA695. The contact name of the person who was actually a witness on that tragic night.
I now know the aircraft was shot down by a night fighter, the tail section was shot off which landed about 3 miles away from where the rest of the Lancaster crashed in a paddock at Kievermont near the small Belgium town of Geel. Of the seven crew only one survived. He became a POW and saw the rest of the war out in a German POW camp. From reading his debriefing report at the end of the war he was treated reasonably well. All the other crew were buried, but later disinterred and transferred to a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. The night fighter pilot who claimed the Lancaster JA695 kill, in turn met his demise a couple of nights later.
We were fortunate that there were a few witness to that crash, two of whom are still alive. One, whose name is Clement, was a teenager at the time and with his parents witnessed the final moments of that aircraft and its courageous crew. They could hear the planes engines screaming as it came spinning down on fire before hitting the ground upside down.
I will definitely be writing a more detailed record of what I have found out about JA695 and its gallant and courageous crew, but until then, for the 11th April 1944 Lest we forget. The town of Geel in Belgium celebrated 70 years of freedom on 25th, 26th and 27th September 2014, by placing a small memorial close to the crash site of Lancaster JA695.
