Short Stirling Wreckage Found in Holland

Brings home the sheer scale of the war effort.
"The last vestiges of a British bomber that never returned from a daring raid over Nazi Germany in the Second World War have washed up on the Dutch coast.
'Astonished' locals discovered fuselage wreckage from a Short Stirling plane on the beach at Camperduin in northern Holland after Storm Eunice in February.
Now the twisted metal has been identified as bomber BF396, which was lost with its crew of eight on the night of December 17, 1942.
BF396 took off from Newmarket in Suffolk to bomb German industry in Fallersleben, but was shot down by Oberleutnant Werner Husemann along the Dutch coast.
Those lost aboard BF396 were pilot Victor Mitchell, second pilot Trevor Horace Bagnall; navigator Reginald William Pearson; air bomber Gerald Thomas Padden, wireless operator Stuart John Goff; flight engineer Robert Hart; mid-upper gunner Arthur Henry Rider and rear gunner Albert Charles William Parker.
Graham Padden – whose father, Dennis, is the last surviving sibling of crew member Gerald – hopes the discovery could bring closure to other relatives.
He said: 'I was somewhat taken aback when I was contacted with news that the wreckage that had washed up.
'Whilst we are not certain that it is wreckage from BF396, there is a very high degree of certainty."
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10675371/Remains-British-Short-Stirling-bomber-crashed-WWII-Dutch-coast.html

 

Sad but another good one. Cheers.