One day, 75 years later, Bath resident and Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine<\/em> reader Mich\u00e8le Gross was surprised to receive a Facebook message from Richard Wyatt, a local journalist, saying that a historian from the Netherlands was trying to get hold of her. She emailed Marcel van der Wielen, who was researching the plane crash of a relative of hers. Hanneck\u2019s account supposedly details the events leading up to the crash, but Marcel had discovered otherwise.<\/p> On that May night, the crew on the No. 166 Squadron Avro Lancaster piloted by Mich\u00e8le\u2019s relative, 21-year-old Geoffrey Clark, were only on their second mission. Also on board were radio operator, Sergeant Raymond Bond, 21; mid-upper gunner, Sergeant Herbert Tulett, 38; rear gunner, Sergeant Leonard Smith; bomb armer, Flight Sergeant Basil Brackley, 22; navigator, Flight Sergeant Percy Pool, 29; and flight engineer, Sergeant Kenneth Slater, 21.<\/p> The following morning 19-year-old Leen Verwest was first on the scene. His account would help to set the record straight \u2013 and ultimately led Marcel to Mich\u00e8le.<\/p> A keen genealogist, Mich\u00e8le helps out at the local archives. She already knew plenty about her father\u2019s side of the family. He was French and had a very famous ancestor: actor Sarah Bernhardt is Mich\u00e8le\u2019s great great grandmother.<\/p> \u201cI am Bernhardt\u2019s last surviving descendant in England. My grandmother Simone was her granddaughter \u2013 I knew her quite well, and she was one of the two children from Bernhardt\u2019s only and illegitimate<\/a> son Maurice. He married a Polish princess, Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Jablonowska, so I have a bit of Polish blood as well.\u201d<\/p> However, Mich\u00e8le knew very little about her mother Alma\u2019s side. \u201cI started looking into my family history about five years ago, on MyHeritage<\/a>. It\u2019s been fascinating.\u201d<\/p> Alma had a difficult childhood. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a happy household, so she was glad to stay with her \u2018Uncle Pop\u2019 and \u2018Aunty Hop\u2019 when she could. George and Florence Clark had one child Geoffrey, who was my mother\u2019s favourite cousin.<\/p> \u201cMy mother used to say that what happened to Geoffrey was so sad \u2013 he was killed in the war, shot down aged 21. She knew nothing more than that.\u201d<\/p> Thankfully, Marcel had ferreted out the details. He had grown up near Elkerzee, and first became intrigued by the Lancaster that had crashed nearby in 2013 when his father told him a story from his childhood. \u201cIn 1944, my grandfather had found some surviving airmen who had crashed in Elkerzee, and was given a photo of Geoffrey by these airmen. The photo is now in the archives of the municipality of the island Schouwen-Duiveland.\u201d<\/p> Marcel set about trying to identify the airmen\u2019s plane, and what had happened to it. \u201cI found websites with this information in 2018.\u201d One was Dutch Study Group Air War 1939\u20131945<\/a>, which holds a Loss Register, and the other was Wings to Victory<\/a>, which focuses on crashes in Zeeland.<\/p> The records state that Geoffrey\u2019s plane was shot down by Gottfried Hanneck. \u201cDuring the course of my research I discovered that this could not be true,\u201d explains Marcel. \u201cHanneck says that the plane he downed that night should have hit the ground with a huge explosion and would have resulted in an impact crater. I tried to pin down the plane\u2019s route and get a better picture of the entire event. I located the crash site exactly using RAF aerial photos for the area from 1944\/1945. However, on the photographs you cannot see any impact crater. I thought that was a bit strange.\u201d<\/p> Confirmation of his theory came in the form of an eyewitness account from Leen Verwest, who was now 94, but remembered the event vividly. \u201cHe could exactly point out the crash site and told me that when he found the plane, three crew members were hanging dead just outside it with their parachute rigging entangled, but the aircraft was still intact.\u201d His recollections suggest that the plane did not go down with huge force, and tallies with the aerial photos. Leen said that it looked as if the pilot had tried to land.<\/p> Of the seven men on board, four died in the crash: Sergeant Bond, Sergeant Tulett, Sergeant Smith and Geoffrey, who was still at the controls.<\/p> The Operations Record Books<\/a> at The National Archives in Kew revealed that on the night of the crash, Bomber Command had three targets, all of them in Belgium: a military camp with SS troops in Bourg-Leopold, and the marshalling yards of Hasselt and Leuven where freight wagons were organised into trains.<\/p> \u201cThe missions in May 1944 were preparations for the landing of the Allied forces in Normandy the following month,\u201d says Marcel. \u201cUnfortunately, the mission in Hasselt that No. 166 Squadron was tasked with was not successful due to difficulties in identifying the target.\u201d Most of the planes returned to their base at RAF<\/a> Kirmington in Lincolnshire that night, but not all. At the end of the account in the Operations Record Book it says simply, \u201cOne aircraft, flown by Pilot Officer Clark and crew, failed to return.\u201d<\/p> As a result of his research, Marcel has concluded that it was another plane that Oberleutnant Hanneck shot down. \u201cA second Lancaster crashed that night in Melsele, a small town west of the mouth of the River Scheldt in Antwerp. This plane did go down with huge impact and an explosion, and as a consequence its crew members could not be identified or recovered from the wreck. This plane belonged to No. 61 Squadron, and was on the way back from its mission to Bourg-Leopold.\u201d<\/p>![\"A](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2024\/02\/Sarah-Bernhardt.jpg?fit=1024,800\")
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