During the night of 15 June 1943, the Lancaster ED810 of the 50 Sqn was shot down by a German night fighter. This bomber had left at Skellingthorpe, Lincolnshire to bomb the German town of Oberhausen. The plane was shot down by the German night fighter Rudolf Frank while it was returning from its mission. The plane came down into the fields of the Laar district in the town of Ekeren, in the north of Antwerp.
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| Picture by Harry Fabel |
The entire crew lost their lives during the plane crash, they were: Albert Victor Crawford (pilot,) Arthur Ernest Davey (navigator,) Joseph Brown McHendry (wireless) William George Reed (bomb aimer) Leslie Toal (flight engineer) Charles Joseph Buckle (mid-upper gunner) and Kenneth Ivor Bowerman (rear gunner). All crew members were later buried at the monumental Schoonselhof cemetery in Antwerp. To remember the event, a monument was built.
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| Picture by Harry Fabel |
The monument is a work of art by artist Stef Van Eyck, it is named AVRO LANCASTER WING and represents a destroyed wing of the plane, with seven fragments symbolizing the seven killed crew members. The artwork is standing at about a hundred meters from where the plane crashed. You can find the monument at this address: Crossing Wielseweg and Laar, Ekeren, Antwerp.