The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War



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

214985

Sgt. John Edward Woodwart

Royal Air Force 408 Sq Hampden

Hampden EQ-D crew

The Hampden document In October 2006 I found some photos again I received from my father of a plane crash in October 1941 in the vicinity of Venlo (The Netherlands). I recognized a Hampden and on the tail I could read the registration EQ-D. I have some pictures of the plane but also a picture of a man lying in a hospital bed and at the backside of this picture my father had written that it was captain Thompson, one of the crewmembers of the Hampden.

With the aid of the internet I found out that the plane belonged to the 408 RCAF Sq and on a veteran site I contacted the webmaster to ask if he knew anything about a Hampden with the EQ-D registration and a crewmember named Thompson. I received an answer about the Hampden EQ-D that crashed in Limburg (province of The Netherlands and Venlo lies in that area) on 8/9 November 1941, but the crewmembers were:

P/O E.L. (Bill) Houghton (RNZAF) P/O J.C. Monkhouse (RCAF) Sgt A.J. (Jack) Gallan Sgt J.E. (John Edward) (Jack) Woodwart

This had to be the Hampden I was looking for, so I asked the webmaster if he would put a question on the site to see if there were any relatives or crewmembers who were interested in my photos. A few days later I got an email from a guy in The Netherlands who was interested in WW2 crashes and he told me that a book existed about the former German Airfield near Venlo and in this book I could read more about the plane. He also gave me a name and address of a person who had the same passion and knew everything about WW2 crashes in Limburg. I obtained the book and there I read:

The Hampden with 4 other planes took off in the evening the 8 of November 1941 at 17.19 local time from Syerston for a bomber attack on the Krupp steel factories at Essen (Germany). They set course to checkpoint Skegness and then to the isle of Texel (The Netherlands) Then they set course to the target, dropped their bombs and made a course at 270 degrees back home. At 22.30 they reached the airspace of Venlo and were engaged by a ME 110 nightfighter flown by Willi Dimter of Nightfighter Sq 1 Venlo. It appeared that both engines of the Hampden were hit and Bill Houghton made a perfect belly emergency landing (a masterpiece in the darkness) in the neighbourhood of Renkensfort at Maasbree (about 10 km away from Venlo)

At the landing 3 crew members were unharmed but one was injured (broken leg) and because of that it was impossible to transport the wounded and therefore the rest of the crew decided to stay together, waiting for the arrival of the Germans. However before the arrival of the Germans one of the crewmembers handed over the documents they had to one of the earlier arrived locals. Willi Dimter crashed on September 17th 1942.

Two weeks later I visited Mr 't Zandt in Venlo and he gave me copies of the photos he had. A picture of the original crew (instead of Sgt Woodward, P/O Bill Bishop belonged to the original crew), another picture of the plane and copies of the documents that were handed over to one of the locals at the crash site. About a month later I got an email from Judy Greers from New Zealand who was a daughter of Jack Woodwart and she told me that her father died in 1990 but had not talked much about the war. She knew that he had been a POW for 3 years after a plane crash in The Netherlands in 1941. On that plane he was a replacement in that crew. During a evacuation of the camp, Woodwart managed to escape and at the end of the war he got back by boat to the UK where he later graduated as a optician in Manchester. There he met his wife and in 1956 the family emigrated to New Zealand, first to Christcurch and then to Timaru.

I mailed the whole story and photos to Judy Greer and she told her mother about it and 2 weeks later she mailed back with another interesting story:

“My mother relates an interesting event that happened in the 1970's - my father was working as an optician in Timaru and had agreed to do some optical work in Greymouth on the West Coast. He flew over and that evening was sitting at dinner with the other people in the hotel including the flight crew. He heard a page over the hotel intercom for a "Mr Houghton" and when he saw this man was one of the group he was sitting with, he asked if he knew or was related to the Houghton (in the crash). Amazingly this man was the same Houghton - who was a New Zealander. Also amazing was that this flight to the West Coast was the first flight my father had been on since the crash in 1941 and the pilot was the same Houghton!!!”

About a year later I bought a book about the Hampden bomber and in the book again I was confronted with a picture of the EQ-D with its crewmembers. So now I’m eager to hear more about a perhaps continuing story?

Hampden EQ-D

Weather report




Additional Information:

Thankyou so much for printing this online for all to read. I was researching my fathers footsteps during his time in WW2(Frank Maxwell Houghton) and thought to look for information regarding his brother Bill Houghton as well. I am so pleased to have come across this information as I'd heard very little about his life. However I did hear that Uncle Bill was in the same POW camp where the so called 'great escape' happened (which was made into a movie starring Steve McQueen?. Uncle Bill did not take part in the great escape but remained behind. If you have any more information regarding either my father or my Uncle I'd love to hear from you.

Claire Davidson



Related Content:








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.