ED328 SR-S
Hi All
I saw your comments and felt I had to reply.
I am the nephew of Sgt John Phillips, I was involved in the research in the crash. We were aware that the bodies had been buried in the 1939 - 1945 war cemetery in Berlin but that was about it. My mother was 11 at the time and my Grandparents were devastated and did not speak about it, thus she new very little about what had happened. The crew was made up of 3 British and 4 Australian, the oldest was 32 the youngest my Uncle at 19, he volunteered because his friends had signed up and he was in a reserved occupation as an Apprentice in engineering he walked 15 miles to do so.
After 2 years of research we managed to get from the Australian Air Force a copy of the crash report done after the war, this turns out to be not very accurate and did not help the guys from the LAO based at Finowfurt Aviation Museum to find anything. The coordinates were incorrect and it states they were buried in a church yard in Biesenthal when in fact they were buried in a small graveyard in Rudnitz which is about 20 miles away. The crash site was close to Lobetal which is the next village to Lanke. The find was only possible thanks to a chance meeting with Dr Hans Richter who was 14 at the time and witnessed the air battle, the break up of the plane and the crash. His father was involved in putting out the fire and removing the bodies from the plane, 6 of the 7 were badly burned, the 7th the tail gunner had crawled from the tail which had broken away from the rest of the plane and landed about 1/2km from the main plane before dying of his injuries, they were laid all out in the village hall before burial with full military honours with a rifle volley from the Luftwaffe based at Finowfurt.
It has been an emotional time for my family and now the families of some of the other crew who again new nothing about the events of that night. This investigation was done because I wanted to know more about what happened, the details were vague and it took the memories of an amazing man and a dedicated bunch of volunteers to find the site and make a permanent exhibition to this brave men who averaged 23 years of age. We are trying to trace the other families of the crew at the moment 4 from the 7 are in contact
Thanks