208825 Sgt Geoffrey Beckett Royal Air Force 44 Squadron (Rhodesia) from:Sheffield, Yorkshire (d.17 Dec 1942) Geoffrey Beckett was my great-uncle. He was born, with his twin sister Jean, on 11 March 1921 in Sheffield, the youngest son of Edward Fisher Beckett and Lottie May Moore.
I do not know when Geoffrey signed up, or for how long he had been flying before his death. The information below is gathered from various sources.
17/18 December 1942
Minor Operations: 27 Lancasters of 5 Group were sent on raids to 8 small German towns and 16 Stirlings and 6 Wellingtons of 3 Group attempted to attack the Opel works at Fallersleben. This type of limited operation proved to be a costly failure. 9 of the 27 Lancasters were lost and, at Fallersleben, only 3 aircraft bombed the target, in cloud conditions, and 6 Stirlings and 2 Wellingtons were lost from this part of the night's operations. Fifty aircraft were dispatched to lay mines from Denmark to southern Biscay - 1 Lancaster was lost - and there were 5 OTU sorties to France. Total losses for the night: 18 aircraft out of 104 dispatched, 1.3 per cent. I know from checking further that Geoffrey's plane was the Avro Lancaster I, registration W4126, KM-B and that he was based in Waddingham in Lincolnshire.
Geoffrey was a Sergeant and was the Air Gunner (mid upper) and the rest of the crew was possibly as follows;
- F/O. Lawrence Gerard Lyons McNamara - Pilot
- F/O. Raymond Norman McCleery - Air Obs
- F/O. James William Loree - Air Obs
- Sgt. Kenneth Robert Macleod - Wireless Operator/Air Gunner
- Sgt. Gordon William Jones - Air Gunner (rear)
- Sgt. G A Read - Flight Engineer
- Sgt. Stanley Holmes - Navigator
There is some confusion in my mind as originally I had assumed that as Sgt Holmes was buried in the same place, and died on the same date (as per the CWGC site) that he was part of the crew - and this seemed to make sense as he was a navigator, but another site does not include him, but does include Sgt Read.
I had always assumed that all of the crew were killed, but I've now discovered that Fl/Eng: Sgt. G.A. Read was a P.O.W. No: 27313 at Camp: Stalag Lamsdorf (344) in Poland. It is understood that W4126 was hit by Kriegsmarine flak and crashed at 18.45 hrs on the island of Texel. Sgt. Read on his release stated that the aircraft was on fire when he baled out. The Germans provided a funeral with full military honours on Tuesday, 22nd December.
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