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

247809 Flt.Lt. Jack Hardy Taylor Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve 182 Squadron (d.28th February 1945) On 28th of February 1945 at 08.45 am Squadron Leader Slug Murray left from Airfield B78 Eindhoven with six Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers for an armed reconnaissance flight to the Bremen-Osnabruck area. Flight Lieutenant Jack Taylor led the Blue section. His number 2 was Warrant Officer Bill Cuthbertson. During this reconnaissance flight they saw a freight train in the vicinity of Bahnhof Drohne. Two aircraft from the Typhoons group carried out an attack on this train. It was Bill Cuthbertson and Jack Taylor, while the rest of the group gave top cover. Suddenly there was a call from Jack "I've been hit". - Bill circled around Jack's plane to see how his emergency landing would take place, but he too was hit by flak. Both made a successful emergency landing on the Bohmter Heide and climbed unharmed from their cockpits. Their mates up in the sky also saw from there that the train that had stopped along the main railway line, was equipped with anti-aircraft weapons and that anti-aircraft guns were hidden in the woods around. The unfortunate Bill Cuthbertson and Jack Taylor were captured quite quickly after the crash and disarmed by members of the Volkssturm. They were then taken to Polizeiposten Bohmte, where Volkssturmfuhrer F. Konig decided to kill both pilots. He and Volkssturm member August Bohning, his brother Friedrich and yet another involved took the two British pilots to a forest near Bohmte and by noon they were murdered with 8 to 12 pistol shots. The bodies of both pilots were thrown into a hastily dug pit and covered with branches. They told the Gendarmeriemeister later that they had shot both pilots during a flight attempt. Jack Taylor and Bill Cuthbertson were later reburied at Neuer Friedhof Lingen. In 1947 they found their permanent resting place at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Kleve. The actual perpetrators, Volkssturmfuhrer Konig and August Bohning were sentenced to death by the British Army Court on 19 December 1945. The judgment for Konig and for August Bohning was death by hanging for both. For Ortsgruppenleiter Friedrich Bohning and the other accomplice, the earlier death sentence was later converted into a life sentence and finally in 1959 to acquittal. Flight Lieutenant (Pilot) Jack Hardy Taylor, age 21 was the son of Tom Lowe Taylor and Doris Taylor, of Marple, Cheshire. He is buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, Kleve. Piet Snellen Add to this record.  Related Content: No. 182 Squadron Royal Air Force B78 Eindhoven 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.