W/O. Frederick William Cuthbertson
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve 182 Squadron
(d.28th February 1945)
British Warrant Officer Frederick Cuthbertson was assigned to 182 Squadron and stationed at Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) B.78, the present Eindhoven Airport. The Allies used these codes for airports mainly to deceive the Germans. 182 Squadron flew with bombers of the Hawker Typhoon type.
To support the ground troops in the battle for Sevenum and Horst, the Squadron carried out attacks on ground targets. On 12 October all bridges, vehicles and also German troops had to be bombed in the area. As a result, the Maas villages were heavily bombed.
During the afternoon attack on Horst, Bill Cuthbertson in Typhoon PD477 was hit by anti-aircraft (Flak) at Oostrum. The bullets not only damaged the engine but the landing gear was also hit and it became clear to the pilot that he could no longer reach his base in Eindhoven. He also flew too low to jump. Along the railway line, he tried to reach the English lines. That seemed to be impossible and the aircraft went lower and lower, to a potato field at the Bertrams farm. Here Bill Cuthbertson made a successful belly landing. The pilot jumped out of the plane immediately after landing and spoke to two spectators; Mrs. Bertrams and her daughter. Through sign language, they were able to tell him that he should hide from the Germans as quickly as possible. Half an hour later, a German guard came from the Messerschmidt B-17, which had made an emergency landing five days earlier at the Heierhoeve to asses the situation. He expelled the curious crowd, but pilot Cuthbertson had disappeared by then. Local residents hid him in Hegelsom. A short time later he was back with his unit in Eindhoven. When a German recovery team cleaned up the wreck, local residents had already removed parts from the aircraft. The propeller was thus preserved and is now part of the war memorial in Sevenum. (from the book Mayday Mayday Mayday by Hub Groeneveld.)
But unfortunately Bill Cuthbertson's luck ended on 28th of February 1945 at 08.45 am Squadron Leader Slug Murray left from Airfield B78 Eindhoven with six Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers for an armed reconnaissance flight to the Bremen-Osnabruck area.
Flight Lieutenant Jack Taylor led the Blue section. His number 2 was Warrant Officer Bill Cuthbertson. During this reconnaissance flight they saw a freight train in the vicinity of Bahnhof Drohne. Two aircraft from the Typhoons group carried out an attack on this train. It was Bill Cuthbertson and Jack Taylor, while the rest of the group gave top cover. Suddenly there was a call from Jack "I've been hit". - Bill circled around Jack's plane to see how his emergency landing would take place, but he too was hit by flak. Both made a successful emergency landing on the Bohmter Heide and climbed unharmed from their cockpits. Their mates up in the sky also saw from there that the train that had stopped along the main railway line, was equipped with anti-aircraft weapons and that anti-aircraft guns were hidden in the woods around. The unfortunate Bill Cuthbertson and Jack Taylor were captured quite quickly after the crash and disarmed by members of the Volkssturm. They were then taken to Polizeiposten Bohmte, where Volkssturmfuhrer F. Konig decided to kill both pilots. He and Volkssturm member August Bohning, his brother Friedrich and yet another involved took the two British pilots to a forest near Bohmte and by noon they were murdered with 8 to 12 pistol shots. The bodies of both pilots were thrown into a hastily dug pit and covered with branches. They told the Gendarmeriemeister later that they had shot both pilots during a flight attempt. Jack Taylor and Bill Cuthbertson were later reburied at Neuer Friedhof Lingen. In 1947 they found their permanent resting place at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Kleve (D).
The actual perpetrators, Volkssturmfuhrer Konig and August Bohning were sentenced to death by the British Army Court on 19th December 1945. The judgment for Konig and for August Bohning was death by hanging for both. For Ortsgruppenleiter Friedrich Bohning and the other accomplice, the earlier death sentence was later converted into a life sentence and finally in 1959 to acquittal.
Warrant Officer Frederick William (Bill) Cuthbertson. RAF Volunteer Reserve. Age 22. Son of William and Gertrude Cuthbertson, is buried in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, Kleve.
Sources:
- Book - Mayday Mayday Mayday from Hub Groeneveld.
- Book - Typhoon Attack by Norman L.R. Franks.
- Book - Typhoons Wings by Chris Thomas.
- Book - Der Landkreis Wittlage 1933-1972.
- 182 Squadron.
- R.A.F. Fighter Command.
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
- SGLO.
