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'Disastrous night'
2011-04-16 15:47:35
16 April 2011 Last updated at 00:22 Share this page Delicious Digg Facebook reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Email Print A disastrous night for Bomber Command By Bob Walker BBC Radio 5 live Tom Roe was a noted rugby player, a great dancer and 'a bit of a lad'
A memorial to the crew of a Lancaster bomber is due to be unveiled in Holland, 67 years after it went missing on a disastrous night for Bomber Command.
Of the seven-man crew, only three bodies were ever found. One was my great-uncle and I spent 10 years tracing the story of that night, and reuniting their families.
It began with a faded photograph of an airman and a single slip of paper outlining the bare details of what happened that snowy night of 19-20 February 1944.
The photograph was of my great uncle, Thomas Roe, and had been one of my late grandmother's treasured possessions. He'd been a flight engineer on Lancaster bombers, serving with 12 Squadron based at Wickenby, Lincolnshire.
The piece of paper was the "Loss Card" relating to Lancaster ND 410 PH-Y. In barely-legible handwriting it bore the names of the crew, their target for that night - Leipzig - and the fact that three bodies were eventually recovered from the Dutch coastline.
The other four were all missing, presumed dead.
Old-fashioned researchI'd heard plenty of stories during my childhood of Tom Roe - a noted rugby player, a great dancer and a bit of a lad. I became curious about his fate and ten years ago decided I'd try and find out more.
This was before the internet shrank the world of research and my first move was to the Public Records Office as it was then called, at Kew in southwest London.
That led me to the squadron's operational record book and a little more detail about what happened that night.
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