Searching for Halifax NP711

On February 21, 1945, Royal Canadian Air Force Halifax NP71 was on a raid over Germany when it crashed into a mountainside near Leistadt. Seventy-eight years later the crew's story is told through the eyes of Rob Wagner, cousin of crewman William Wagner. A Dutch-German battlefield excavation team uncovered the wreckage and organized a memorial for the 7 fallen crewmen.
#documentary #history #wwii #historydocumentary #halifax
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[@Coverly]

Almost every Danish churchyard, contains the beautifully maintained graves of young kids from Bomber Command or the 8th USAF. It breaks my heart when I see them, because 19 is awfully young to be dying several thousand miles away from home. As for LMF, they could have stayed at home and lived their lives in peace, but didn't. That's heroism!

[@martinbrode7131]

And how much civilians habe your „heroes” killed?

[@ChickenNugget-dk9hp]

@@martinbrode7131 Not as many as the Germans did.

[@martinbrode7131]

@@ChickenNugget-dk9hp Your nickname says it all. Lachnummer. 🐔

[@robotu4623]

What a great way to tell their story and remember them. This video randomly came up in my feed today, by coincidence my Fathers older brother was shot down the night of 20/21 Feb 45 on a raid to Monheim in a/c NP942. He survived fortunately but spent the rest of the war as a POW.

[@johngrantham8024]

Jane Gulliford-Lowes description of fear, trauma, anxiety etc is a tad overdone. Whilst true of many aircrew, it is by no means universal. Whilst all aircrew had moments of fear, many were generally unfazed. My late father, a veteran of 56 operations, kept a contemporary diary of his life from volunteering until the end of his second 'tour'. On only a couple of occasions does he mention feeling badly frightened when the aircraft sustained flak damage. In conversation with him, he said 'I was eighteen years old, invincible, and enjoyed every minute of the greatest adventure of my life'. At a reunion at RAF Wyton, I spent time chatting with Dad's mid upper gunner. He was genuinely puzzled at being considered a hero. He explained... Born on a small croft in the highlands of Scotland, Alan had to share shoes and a bed with his siblings. It was a hard life and when not in school, he worked hard helping his parent farm. As a young lad, he saw an aeroplane fly over and was fascinated by it. Obviously flying was an impossibility for someone like him. Then came the war. He volunteered as a means of escape. He was given a uniform, his very own pair of shoes, slept in his own freshly sheeted bed, was fed three meals a day and flew in an aeroplane. On top of all that, they paid him! As far as Alan was concerned, a bit of danger was worth it. So content was he that he was known to doze off in his turret when returning from a trip. So, not all aircrew were scared witless or ended up with PTSD! Incidentally, after demob, Alan trained as and had a successful career as a civil engineer. For some, the war brought excitement, challenge and opportunity.

[@stevegilliver5104]

From what I have studied over the years, reading biographies etc, you are correct. To many young men, it was an exciting adventure with only the odd scare. An important point to remember.

[@nobbybrown8056]

Thank you so much for doing this video, it brought tears to my eyes for these lost men. I am very grateful for what they did. They WERE hero's and I do hope everything they did was not in vain as quickly touched on in this video with some leaders in this world. I salute these men and hold them in the highest honour.

[@lionelaitken4997]

An excellent tribute to those heroes, thank you for sharing their story.

[@johngrantham8024]

The RAF practice of assembling various 'trades' in a hangar and allowing them to form crews through choice was a good one. It allowed for mutual assessment. In my late Father's case, he immediately liked the tall American pilot in an RCAF uniform who, spotting my father's 'Brazil' shoulder badges, approached him as a fellow 'across the pond' type. During the same gathering, they 'acquired ' Canadians as Navigator and Bomb Aimer and a rear gunner from London. With this basic five, they trained on Wellingtons at 20 OTU, Lossiemouth. When they were posted to HCU at Rufforth, they were allocated two more, both Scots, as Flight Engineer and Mid Upper gunner

[@glenskingsley5812]

Great upload but music is distracting and not in keeping with the subject matter. No music needed in my opinion

[@user-rb8lo3vn9v]

Agree, too upbeat - the soft disco /rocky drumbeat is just wrong. Better to loose it.

[@pirated8557]

Excellent documentary .

[@SimonHeartfield]

Interesting film but an absolutely ghastly choice of music. I had to watch with the sound off and subtitles on.

[@daveworthing2294]

Why is music put on almost every video? Can't see the point of it at all.

[@allandavis8201]

I totally understand that the overall casualty rate for bomber crews was 51%, but that wasn’t the rate for the crews flying their first mission, I’m sure it was still high but not the 51% (or nearly 50% quoted @ 3:50+), unfortunately I can’t find a rate for first mission losses but if it was the near fifty percentage point then bomber command would have been completely ineffective within weeks of the war (Bomber Command operations) commencing, not just due to lack of pilots but lack of aircraft. I remember a film starring Gordon Jackson as an RAF Nav serving in a crew of RCAF Airmen as the sole RAF crew member and one RCAF crewman who was born in the United States, I’m not sure but I think the title was “Millions Like Us” alongside Eric Portman, and the character G Jackson played was selected by the Crew Captain after the rest had been together for a while, a bit like the crew of this tragic event. A very interesting and informative piece of history, thanks for sharing it with us all. Per Ardua Ad Astra, Lest We Forget. P.S The 51% I quoted is taken from the Imperial War Museum archives.

[@johngrantham8024]

Analysis showed that the casualty rate was higher amongst crews during their first five missions. Whilst there is no definitive evidence why, it was generally assumed that experience was a factor. There was never a shortage of airmen under training and some had to 'mark time' before posting to their final OTU.

[@allandavis8201]

@@johngrantham8024 Thanks for your reply, I was reading an article on the Bomber Command website that said about the first 5 missions, but that article also says that the last 5 missions were also the most likely to see crews lost, I think 💭 that it could have been down to overconfidence or a bit of complacency creeping into their mission activities, things like a lower level of scanning the sky or something like that, whatever the reason for it doesn’t change the fact that these men, almost boys in some cases, were part of the greatest generation of military personnel that the world has ever seen, they knew what they had to do and did it even when they knew that every mission could be their last, personally I would have been petrified every single time, even on the so called “milk runs”. I get your point about the number of people in the training system and that some had delays in reaching their final OTU (OCU as they are now) but the fact is that experience was the key factor in Bomber Command remaining effective in actually achieving the mission numbers needed to take the war to the Nazis, if the majority of crews were just out of training then it would not be possible to sustain the operational strength of the Command, the Japanese found out in the pacific theatre that having the number of pilots/crews without experience was a recipe for disaster, that was because, unlike the allies, they didn’t rotate their experienced pilots/crews to training duties, they just left them on the front line and had only new inexperienced pilots/crew to replace them, I don’t think that the allies would have been able to achieve the results in the air battles if Japan had not squandered their experienced pilots etc, their experience passed onto pilots in training could have made a huge difference to their ability to combat the allied pilots who had been trained by experienced pilots.

[@Dalesmanable]

The calculation is not per mission but a simple ratio of losses to trained crews. It does not reflect the loss rate over a tour, which were much higher, because it is skewed by the large numbers at the end of the war doing a few missions.

[@allandavis8201]

@@Dalesmanable as I said in my first line it was the OVERALL casualty rate as I have quoted from the IWM (Duxford) records.

[@cosmodog4845]

Very good, thank you.

[@davidrobinson6353]

Best of the Best of the Best Generation this Planet will ever witness. Thankyou all may you RIP. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧👍

[@johngrantham8024]

Aircraft weren't 'nicknamed' (for example) R - Roger. It was their radio callsign. All squadron aircraft bore a two letter of letter number squadron code, followed by the individual aircraft identity letter. These were called out by the wireless operator using the phonetic alphabet of the time or a derivation thereof.

[@mhollman8650]

Who chose the music for this video??? It doesn’t fit at all

[@andrewmacdonald4833]

Music's pretty ordinary for such a dramatic story...otherwise a very interesting video.

[@rascalferret]

The intro plays bass like I do...

[@FeckArseIndustries]

Lose the music.

[@derekmorgan3706]

Enjoyed the story but the music is terrible. Stopped it from being a good documentary.

[@bobmarshall3700]

Awful 'music'.

[@Shoey00124]

This was a really nice documentary that you totally devalued and sullied when you showed a clip of Donald Trump when talking about authoritarianism.

[@caswhitmore1400]

This is an effort to watch , stupid out of context music .

[@dulls8475]

Shame you had to besmirch this video with your lefty view points at the end. It is about them and not your politics. Putting Trump up there was pathetic.

[@bogrot69]

They just can't help themselve's