226162 Sgt Charles Alexander "Barney" Barends Royal Air Force 100 Squadron from:Liverpool My dad Charles Barends was a rear gunner stationed at RAF Grimsby (known as Waltham) during WW2. He was in Crew 100 of the 100 squadron. His crew did night bombings over Germany.
My dad and the co-pilot were both injured during landing returning from a night bombing raid over Germany. The following night the same crew went on another night bombing mission with a replacement co pilot and rear gunner and their Lancaster never returned. Many years later, the Lancaster bomber was discovered under water off the coast of France. It had been shot down trying to return to Grimsby Air base. How lucky were these two crew members!! My dad was only 17 years old when he went on the first mission (he lied about his age). He told us he thought it was going to be exciting but after the first night bombing mission he realised how terrible it was and told us most of the crew went AWOL !! No one went looking for them as they knew they would come back which they did.
He was a quiet man who I believed suffered most of his life from this experience and did not tell us too much, but what he did tell us was horrific. A couple of things he told us was sitting in the rear turret he did not have a parachute as there was no room in the confined space and if he would have had to bail out he would have had to find his parachute... so in other words no chance of survival! Imagine a Lancaster going down and those at the rear trying to claw themselves out at that angle of decent. Also he told us that many Lancs were lost as bombs hit those planes flying underneath them!!
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