Flying Officer John Edward Northend RAFVR

Sources:

Flying Officer John Northend RAFVR - CWGC Website

John Edward Northend was the son of William and Phyllis Northend, and was born on the 21^st September 1920 at Sheffield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. John was brought up knowing of his family’s military service and sense of duty. His father William Frederick Northend was a veteran of the Great War, having served in the 1/3^rd West Riding Field Ambulance (1/3^rd WR Fd Amb), Royal Army Medical Corps in the 43^rd W Riding Division. William’s brother Ernest was a pre-war Territorial soldier and member of the 1/3^rd WR Fd Amb. He was decorated with the Military Medal on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

A second Uncle, Edgar, also served. He volunteered for service with the Honourable Artillery Company, however before the war Edgar had spent two years working in a print house in Leipzig to learn the advancements made in the German printing industry, and had become fluent in German. He was therefore posted to the Field Headquarters of the Royal Engineers and was employed on signals interception duties, receiving and translating German radio transmissions.

A third Uncle, Lewis Northend, had suffered from chronic asthma since childhood and was medically unfit for military service; he died as a result of an asthma attack in 1939.

John gained his matriculation at King Edward VII School in Sheffield in 1937 and entered the family business as an apprentice printer, but was called up for service in September 1940 as an Aircraftsman 2^nd Class;  and was appointed as Sergeant aircrew sometime in 1941 under service number 1378643; after basic training he was posted abroad to Rhodesia for navigation gunnery and bombing courses.

He arrived back in the England  in February 1942 , having been appointed to an emergency commission as a Pilot Officer in the General Duties Branch of the RAF Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) on 31^st January 1942. He underwent further training in night flying on heavy bombers in Wales and at RAF Kinloss in Scotland. John was posted to No 61 Sqn at RAF Syerston in Nottinghamshire, flying Whitley bombers, and took part in maritime anti-submarine operations in the Atlantic and in the Bay of Biscay area. It is thought that he was promoted to Flying Officer on 1^st October 1942.

After conversion on to the much larger Lancaster bomber, 61 Squadron took part in some of the long-range bombing operations against Northern Italian cities, as well as the more usual German targets.

Early in the morning of 13 January 1943 Lancaster bombers of No.61 Squadron, were part of a force of 55 Lancasters from Nos. 1 & 5 Groups RAF, with target indication by 4 Mosquito aircraft from the Pathfinder Force;  taking part in an attack on the Krupps works at Essen, one of the cities in the industrial heartland of Germany, the Ruhr.

The Oboe precision navigation equipment of the first Pathfinder Mosquito failed and the other 3 Mosquitos were all late. Because of this many of the Lancasters bombed on dead reckoning, relying on pinpoint accurate navigation to hit the target. Some bombs did fall in Essen, where 20 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged and 9 people were killed, but other bombs fell in Neviges, Remscheid, Silongen and Wuppertal, a group of towns 12-20 miles south of Essen. 19 people were killed in Remscheid.

John Northend was the navigator of Lancaster MkI  serial number W4192 carrying the 61 Sqn. markings ‘QR-E’, piloted by Flt Lt David Stapylton Gillett of Leatherhead in Surrey. They took off at 03:35hrs on 13 January from RAF Syerston. After successfully bombing their target, the Krupps factory in Essen, their Lancaster crashed near Mettman, 14 km ENE of Düsseldorf.

The crew  were all killed, and were buried in the Nordfriedhof cemetery on 18 Jan 1943. John and two other members of the crew could not be individually identified and were buried tgether in a communal grave. When the bodies were exhumed for consolidation into the large Reichswald British War Cemetery after the War, the three airmen were positively identified and were buried in individual graves; as is custom wherever possible, all seven crew were buried in adjacent graves in the Reichswald War Cemetery near Kleve,  close to the German – Dutch border.

It is not known exactly why they crashed, as there were no outstanding claims by German night fighter or anti-aircraft artillery batteries; it is therefore believed that they may have been damaged by flak over the target. It is also possible that the aircraft suffered a structural failure, or had been damaged by a bomb dropped from another Lancaster bombing from a higher altitude.