256442 P/O. Frank Ernest Baker Royal Air Force 106 Squadron from:Manor Park, County of London (d.12th Mar 1945) Frank Baker died in action just two years before I was born so he was the uncle I never met.
Frank was the pilot of Lancaster RA508, flying from RAF Metheringham, which was the only aircraft lost without trace in the bombing raid on Dortmund on 12th of March 1945 in which more than a thousand aircraft took part.
The loss card for RA508 merely refers to radio contact having been lost over the North Sea. However, the log of another pilot involved in the raid refers to a Lancaster, which could only have been RA508, being hit by a bomb dropped from another aircraft in cloud and a passage in the book, Tail End Charlies, refers to an identical incident in the same raid. RA508 was destroyed over Dortmund in an accident due to poor visibility that would now be called a blue on blue incident. Additional Information: | My late mother was engaged to W/O Baker.
Bomber Command Losses 1945 /W R Chorley records that Lancaster LM131 PM-V was hit by a bomb that became embedded in the mainplanes on the same raid. The aircraft made it back to the Lincolnshire coast where the crew bailed out.
Keith Bunn
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