The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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22245 P/O. Bob Davenport Royal Air Force 10 Sqd. (d.5th March 1945) Wing Commander Ralph Frederick Davenport aged 32 of Belleville, Ontario.Pilot of 431 squadron, RCAF & commanding officer Wendelin Rink, air bomber, aged 21 from Kendal,Saskatchewan.,431 squadron RCAF.jpg Clarence Lecky, aged 28 air gunner 431 squadron RCAF of Port Arthur,Ontario.jpg These photos are part of the crew of the Davenport crew. Wing commander Ralph Davenport was only a commanding officer at Croft between jan 14th 1945 to March 11th 1945,when he and his crew ,flying Lancaster KB853 SE-A,were shot down over Essen. They took off at 11.42 from Croft & crashed in the target area. All were laid to rest in the Sud-West Friedhof. Six are now buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, while P/O gunner Clarence Lecky was exhumed by an American Graves inspection team & interred on 17th May at Hargraten. Since then his remains have been recovered to Venray War Cemetery. The other crew members who also did not survive this mission were Navigator Donal Kevin Joseph Hector aged 24,a graduate of the University of Toronto & from Toronto,Canada. Wireless operator Charles William Fraser,aged 24 from Windsor,Ontario,Canada. P/O & M/Upper gunner Hubert (Bertie) Bishop,aged 30 from Glace Bay,Nova Scotia.& P/O Flight engineer Arthur Clifford Pettifor aged 29 from Beaver Mines,Alberta,Canada. On the Essen raid on 11/3/1945 only 3 crews were shot down-The Davenport crew of 431 squadron. The Fern crew of 434 squadron who also flew out of Croft. & the Gibbins crew of 153 squadron. Add to this record.  Related Content: No. 10 Squadron Royal Air Force RAF Melbourne Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. 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. Contact us. 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.