Irvo the Great
Among my mum's photos from her time at a WAAF were two showing Don Irving, one of just Don, dated 17/2/44, enscribed "To Rene, love Don" and another of six of the crew, signed by each of the seven crew to "Inky", her WAAF nickname.
Don Irving and his crew were lost in the ill fated raid on Nuremberg. The seven regular crew (6 Aussies and a RAF Flight engineer) were joined on the mission by "specialist" F/O Ralph Litchfield, RCAF, who would have been responsible for the ABC equipment.
The attack on Nuremberg was the last fateful act of Bomber Harris's "Battle of Berlin", an attempt to destroy German morale by battering it's cities night after night before the bomber force turned its attentions to preparing the way for D-Day in June. The raid, on the night of the 30th March 1944, was a major disaster for Bomber Command with 95 aircraft, 11.9% of the force, shot down as a clear moonlit night turned the raid into a turkey shoot for German fighters, 82 aircraft were lost before they reached the target. The loss was the worst suffered by Bomber Command on a single raid during the whole of WWII.
The raid, and the various cock ups made before and during it are still the subject of a lot of discussion still and a number of books including the definitive one by Martin Middlebrook. See also a recent Daily Mail article published on the 70th Anniversary of the raid here. More aircrew were lost in the single raid on Nuremberg (545) than in the whole of the Battle of Britain (498).
Don's Irving's aircraft was shot down over Lauterbach, about 40km north east of Frankfurt and about 200 kilometers short of Nuremberg. The aircraft crashed in forest and only two of the men aboard could be identified, John Newman and John Noske being buried in Berlin War Cemetary. the others have no known grave and are commemorated at the Runnymede Memorial.
The crew of Lancaster Mk I, LL861, took off from Ludford Magna at 22.11 to attack Nuremberg. They were due to return at 05:45 but nothing further was heard of the aircraft. After the war it emerged that they had been blown well off course by strong winds and were shot down by a German Me110 night fighter, possibly flown by Hauptman Gustav Tham, prior to reaching the target. The Lancaster exploded, scattering debris over a large area near the German town of Lauterbach and killing all eight of the crew, who were on their 9th operation.
The aircraft squadron markings are given as either SR-H or SR-U depending on source. The editor of the 101 Squadron Association website stated "As to the identity of the Lanc, it almost certainly didn't carry the code SR-H as another Lancaster with this code flew on the mission and also went on to survive the war with 121 Ops. The SR-H for 861 ident comes from an incorrect entry in the 101 Sqn ORB. It was a brand new Lanc on its first Op and may not have been entered correctly in the books or painted up yet."
Submitted 27 April 2016
by Mike Wainwright
