rmventuri
Your very poignant thread came as quite a surprise to me as your Uncle must have been operating from Snaith, near Selby, in Yorkshire on the same Squadron as myself at we certainly both took part in his ill fated attack on Leipzig on the night of Dec. 3rd. 1943.
I have only a very sketchy report of the trip in my log book but I was flying in Halifax LK (51 Sqdn) 'K' 899 and reported that I bombed from 16,000 ft. and that there were many fighters over the target. The whole round trip was 8hrs25 all night flying, although I noted that we landed back at Snaith in daylight. That would put the actual attack over Leipzig in the very early hours of Dec.4th. The long trip indicates that we would have been routed back to England by a course that would avoid the very dangerous Flak, Searchlight and Fighter boxes that existed all the way down from Northern Holland to the lower end of the Ruhr (Happy Valley !) and that is possibly why he would be south of Leipzig when he was shot down. I am sorry that my memory of the actual route, weather and takeoff conditions is non existent but I would always note anything that differed from the normal in my log book and there is nothing there to signify anything abnormal. There is one very significant detail and that is that the name of the Captain rang some sort bell in my memory and I am sure that I knew him and, thus quite possibly , the rest of the crew. I was also a P/O and would have shared the Officer's Mess with him ; Can you find out if he was a member of C Flight as that was the Flight that I was in under the leadership of Sqdn. Ldr. Charlie Porter, who was not a Pilot but a Navigator/Bomb Aimer and flew with all his Flight, irrespective of the rank of the Captain? He, unfortunately , died ,a few years ago. Another clue is that my own mid-upper Gunner, Roy Burch, was also a Canadian and in the R.C.A.F. and would certainly know your Uncle as a fellow member of the Sgt's Mess. Once again, unfortunately, he was the only member of my crew to volunteer to stay on after I had finished my tour and was shot down and killed in March of 1944.
I am so sorry that I cannot remember anything more but I am afraid that the Grim Reaper is the main factor in there not being more people around to help you in what is a very fine cause and one that makes me feel proud that there are people around ,like yourself who still care about their ancestry to try and find out some more about it. You can be very proud of it and I am sure that you are. I hope that you find solace that there were people around him that must have enjoyed his company and respected him for what he was doing as we all were. My very best wishes to you , Reg.