The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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223600 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. Memorial plaque News clipping, missing Cyril Dennison. Add to this record.  Related Content: No. 61 Squadron Royal Air Force 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.