I know people have mixed feelings about e-bay, but every now and again something appears on there which I just have to have !

One such has arrived in the post today. A little 'lot' consisting of :

- An Air Navigator's brevet
- A genuine Pathfinder badge
- A white linen or cotton scarf.

Yes - but - embroidered in an amateur hand onto the scarf is a Navigator's emblem and numbers 1-28 in red thread ; against each is the name of a target in blue thread.

The reason I bid is that number 4 is Peenemunde, number 28 is Mailly-le-Camp. Bomber Command only went to these targets once each, thus pinpointing the dates of the beginning and end of the tour.

Armed with a copy of ' The Bomber Command War Diaries ' I have spent a really absorbing hour filling in the rest.

'BERLIN' is embroidered in big blue and red letters and was operation numbers 6,11,12,13,15 & 16. By carefully checking which forces and aircraft went on each raid, this Navigator definitely flew in Lancasters.

Cross-checking the Groups involved, he was almost certainly in 8 Group (PFF) - so the Pathfinder badge is correct. The man is lucky - he misses December '43 and January '44, the worst months.

Was he wounded ?

He's back 'on' in February, but then suddenly in April commences a series of raids carried out by 5 Group alone. This fits ! Notoriously, part of 8 Group was suddenly 'detached' to join 5 Group in the first week of April.

Only two Lancaster Squadrons were involved - 83 and 97.

It stops at Mailly-le-Camp, no 28. That raid was a disaster, but he must have got back to embroider the name. A PFF tour was 45 ops....

The embroidery is far too clumsy for a woman or girl, and in any case knowledge of targets was forbidden to wives or girlfriends.

Anyhow - it's a fun piece of research ! Oh - and I paid for the whole 'lot' the going price for just the PFF badge alone....

[ 10. February 2004, 03:32 PM: Message edited by: Martin Bull ]

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Good find mate! Is there any chance you can post any pics of the stuff?

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

I really need a digicam

But looking hard at the scarf, a few things strike me :

- The scarf is of simple cloth
- The embroidering must have taken quite some time, unusual on an operational squadron
- The spelling of some of the German and French placenames is a little shaky, as if done from memory and not logbooks
- The number '28' for the last operation is surrounded by a red embroidered circle

I'm beginning to think that he was shot down over Mailly-le-Camp and had plenty of time to make this souvenir while sitting in a POW camp.

Now, 42 aircraft were lost at Mailly, and I have a copy of Jack Currie's 'Battle Under The Moon' , which lists the crews of all of them.....

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Amazing, Martin! What a piece of history to have custody off! And what a piece to research! I will be amazed if you will come up with a name. I almost got a lot from that 50 Sqn man. Only got a few books in the end, because I missed the really interesting stuff in the other category. I went as far as to email the winner of the auction to sell me the lot, but he didn't want to....

Absolutely amazing. I have to check Ebay more often and start bidding against you! [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]

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"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" - Homer Simpson

(banner by Otto)
www.basher82.nl

Great addition to your fine collection Martin !

now shot down by German Nachtjäger or Flak ? and if a night fighter, whom ?..........all in the months ahead I suppose and not entirely an impossibility though.

Got an interesting RAF memento coming in the months to come. This will actually be my first RAF signed photos in my collection. On the night of 14/15, March 1945 one of the RAF Fortresses I was doing research on and you chaps helped out with, an author is obtaining signatures of the living crewmen of that RAF Fort in exchange for information about Martin
Becker and his bordfünker Karl Johanssen......they had shot down this particular a/c (K. Johanssen with the MG 131 in the Ju 88G-6)

truly a small world we live in.

Collect on gentlemen !!!

{E}

Stevin - that reminds me....I never did manage to arrange that Typhoon re-enactment attack on, er, what was your address again ? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Erich ; so it was 'Tino' Becker. Interesting stuff and you will have a great memento !

My 'bomber' scarf is a really, really fascinating thing and so tantalising to be only able to guess at the story behind it.

This, of course, is the really frustrating thing about collecting such items - they just CAN'T TALK !

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

At the risk of boring everyone except me, here's where the unknown Navigator went. With Peenemunde and Mailly-le-Camp as 'datum points', it's been fairly easy to track the raids via Middlebrook & Everitt : -

1) Nuremburg - 10/11 Aug 1943
2) Milan - 12/13 Aug 1943
3) Milan - 15/16 Aug 1943
4) Peenemunde - 17/18 Aug 1943
5) Leverkusen - 22/23 Aug 1943
6) BERLIN - 23/24 Aug 1943
7) Mannheim - 23/24 Sept 1943
8) Munich = 2/3 October 1943
9) Frankfurt - 4/5 October 1943
10)Dusseldorf - 3/4 November 1943
11)BERLIN - 18/19 November 1943
12)BERLIN - 22/23 November 1943
13)BERLIN - 23/24 November 1943
14)Frankfurt - 25/26 November 1043
15)BERLIN - 26/27 November 1943
16)BERLIN - 2/3 December 1943
17)Leipzig - 3/4 December 1943
18)Stuttgart - 20/21 February 1944
19)Stuttgart - 1/2 March 1944
20)Stuttgart - 15/16 March 1944
21)Frankfurt - 18/19 March 1944
22)Essen - 26/27 March 1944
23)Tours - 10/11 April 1944
24)Juvisy - 18/19 April 1944
25)La Chapelle - 20/21 April 1944
26)Bordeaux - 28/29 April 1944
27)Toulouse - 1/2 May 1944
28)Mailly-le-Camp - 3/4 May 1944.

Very few 'pieces of cake' among that lot in the winter of '43/'44...... [img]graemlins/vc.gif[/img]

__________________
"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

I wonder if he is now eligable for a free airplane ride to any destination of his choosing because of all the air-miles he logged?

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

Geez, I was going to say, Martin....This guy had to fly for his monthly wage! Those are some targets!!

He must have felt terrible time and time again when 'tonights target' was revealed....

__________________
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" - Homer Simpson

(banner by Otto)
www.basher82.nl

The gap between 4th December and 20th February intrigues me.....aaargh, so frustrating !

I have a rare copy of John Searby's 'The Great Raids : Peenemunde' which lists every man who flew on that raid. So the answer is in my hand...somewhere

[ 11. February 2004, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: Martin Bull ]

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Following obsessive cross-referencing, very few aircrew navigator casualties survived to become POWs after Mailly-le-Camp. NONE of them flew to Peenemunde nine months earlier.

Some tours finished early if the individual had experienced particularly 'dodgy do's' toward the end & the CO was sympathetic.

Not easy, this research business ! But whatever, this particular piece of militaria is a special link to the past, and will encourage me to study the winter '43/'44 bomber war even harder !

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

That IS interesting, Martin!

Things like that give proper/more value to the item, I think. To know the history of it is very important, in case it can be traced...

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Just to show how truly crazy the world of e-bay is.....

A Pathfinder wing badge has sold on UK ebay ( just the metal badge, nothing else, no provenance, ... ) and after fierce bidding, finished at...

£170.60 ! !

Or, more than four times what I paid for the badge, brevet and embroidered scarf last year.

Truly unbelievable - Pathfinder wings are nice, but they're not that rare....

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Martin what is that in US dollars ? German nf badges especially bronze is not that rare and is going upwards US 1000.00 which is insane

E

It is $328 .....

I still can't believe it....the 'winner' must have an awful lot more money than sense.... [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Sometimes people get "bidding crazy".I always put a certain limit where my bidding ends if that limit is reached.No matter how nice the item is sometimes people pay rather absurd figures to get it. Of course if I was a seller I would not mind...

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Well, this seller must be laughing all the way to the bank - literally !

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

I'm glad you bumped this thread up Martin. Your research regarding the scarf is a fascinating story. In my opinion, it would make for a very interesting magazine article if you are inclined to try to sell it.

[ 08. March 2005, 11:26 PM: Message edited by: Deep Web Diver ]

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This information has been posted for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes.
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"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." - Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 19, 1863
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"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." - William Faulkner

Thanks, DWD. It's still my favourite militaria purchase ever, and I often look at the scarf wondering who the owner was.

To be able to work out the details of the operations, but not his Squadron, is very frustrating indeed....but my mind keeps working on it !

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Thats some interesting stuff! I would love to have something like that as my Grandfather flew as a Bombardier with 97 Squadron (in a Lancaster of course) but was only old enough to join in 1944. I have his logbook and all, and he flew one mission at the end of the war called 'Dodge' i believe, but no one i have asked knows what that one was about...

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