The story of the crash of the Wellington Mk1C L7858, sq.code OJ-A of which Edward Guy Prettyman was air observer.
A lot of activity was going on at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolkwas that evening of March 14, 1941. From 7.50pm on the Wellingtons of 149 Squadron took off for a bombing flight to Gelsenkirchen in the German Ruhr area. The weather was excellent for navigation. But the light clouds and the bright moonlight were also in favor of the German night fighters. They could find the bombers very easy that way.
The target was the oil refineries of Gelsenkirchen. In total, a hundred and one bombers flew to the target that night. Falling German defense grenades caused minor damage in the city. The English bombs, on the other hand, hardly found their tagets.
Only sixteen aircraft managed to hit the Hydrierwerk Scholven refinery which caused a lot of damage however. The total number of victims was nine and the production of the refineries stopped completely.
In Venlo the air raid siren went off at 9.40pm when the fleet of British aircraft approached. Meanwhile, the German night fighters were already in the air. At about 10.30pm the German combat command officer Oberleutnant Knickmeier of the Nachtjagdlocation 5C at Meyel conducted the black Bf110 from Haupmann Streib to the Wellington L7858 of Sgt Hawley of 149 Squadron.
The German searchlights flashed on and after a short air fight Hauptmann Streib won the victory. The British aircraft went down like a fireball. At 10.34pm a deafening explosion put an end to the lives of the crew. The bodies were unrecognizably maimed in a huge crater in Mariaveen, a swamp area in Sevenum near the border with the village of Helenaveen. German soldiers set off the area and extinguished some small fires that arose in the area. The Wellington L7858 was the tenth victim of the onboard guns of the Bf 110 Messerschmidt from Hauptmann Streib.
In the firefight, however, Streib's Bf 110 was also severely damaged by machine gun fire from the Wellington tail gunner, Sgt Ward. The 'funker' of Streib, Oberleutnant Josef Schnauster got seriously injured on his leg.
German soldiers picked up the mortal remains of the six crew members. They were buried in a mass grave at Ehrenfriedhof Venlo at the Dr. Blumenkampstraat. In 1947 by order of the British authorities, all mortal remains were reburied at the central British Jonkerbos War Cemetery in Nijmegen. But as so often the identification of this crew proved to be impossible. They therefore received a collective grave on their last resting place.
Source: Book Mayday Mayday Mayday from Hub Groeneveld
The crew (less Hawley and Rogers) had flown as crew for Sgt Marr in late 1940 and later flew eight operations with Sgt Hawley as the pilot of the aircraft they had flown in with Sgt Marr - OJ-A L7858. On one occasion, with Hawley at pilot, they had bombed from 9,000ft and then descended to 200ft to machine gun the searchlights. They were also known to 'dive bomb' targets on occasion. Hawley had been on the squadron since mid-November 1940 as a 2nd pilot. That was also the time when the crew were flying with Sgt Marr who later left the squadron as Tour-ex.