Short Stirling

[Ovenpaa]

This photograph of a Short Stirling from Jenk's prompted me to post some additional pictures of one that failed to return home in 1943


The crew was on it's first operational tour laying mines in the Skagerrak towards Oslo when it was spotted by Gerhard Rath in a JU88 Night Fighter. The JU88 pilot Gerhard Rath returned to the crash site the following day in a Fieseler Storck and 'flew over to honour the dead' before returning to Herring.

September 2010, we were out for a drive near Bork Viking Harbour in West Jutland when we spotted a sign marked 'Flyers Grave' which after a short drive along some tracks led to a copse in the middle of a field. The copse is actually a ring of trees with a dark still pond in the middle formed when the Stirling went in. The area has various parts of the Short Stirling scattered around along with a wooden cross and small memorial with details on the crash and the lost crew.

A few thoughts, as the site was easily accessible had it been in the UK the debris would probably have long since disappeared, also it was the coldest blackest place I have visited in along while. No bird song, very little greenery for September, quite foreboding in fact.

This is a mix of mine and others images.

[Jenks]

Ovenpaa..

A few thoughts, as the site was easily accessible had it been in the UK the debris would probably have long since disappeared,

And no doubt the site would have been desecrated/ vandaised as well.

My dad had a much happier encounter with a JU88

I recall an occasion when breaking cloud flying the Beam to Castle-Donnington airfield (now East Midlands Airport), I was surprised to see a German J.U. 88 just a few yards on my port beam - he no doubt was also surprised. We both waved to each other before peeling off.