An 80-year wait to identify lost airmen

THE Netherlands Defence ministry has confirmed the identity of remains found in a Lancaster bomber shot down over Holland 80 years ago.

They belonged to Arthur Smart, a 27-year-old flight engineers, mid-upper gunner Charles Sprack, aged 23 and Raymond Moore, the 23-year-old old wireless operator who were reported missing in action on June 13, 1943.

The Pathfinder with its crew of seven was returning from a bombing raid over Bochum (Germany) when it was shot down over the IJsselmeer lake.  The bodies of four men were washed up and buried but Smart, Sprack and Moore were never found.

Fifty-three years later, a local fishing boat hauled up a motor and after removing the serial number took it to a museum run by the Stichting Aircraft Recovery Group, which began investigating the discovery.

In 2016, the group found evidence of human remains.  “This confirmed that one or more of the crew of the Lancaster ED603 were down there,” the recovery group’s chairman Johan Graas said.

A salvage operation financed by the Netherlands’ €15 million national plane-wreck rescue fund began at the end of last summer.  It located the remains of three bodies and two silver-plated cigarette cases.

One bore the initials of the Arthur Smart and the other had belonged to Raymond Moore, proving that the bodies of three missing airmen had finally been located.

“The goal of our foundation is to give men like them an official grave, men who gave their lives for our freedom. Alas, it has taken many years,” Graas told the UK media.

Approximately 5,500 aircraft were lost over the Netherlands during the Second World War and the Dutch government believes some 400 of them still contain remains of airmen from both the Allied and German forces.