247809 Flt.Lt. Jack Hardy Taylor Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve 182 Squadron (d.28th February 1945) 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.
The actual perpetrators, Volkssturmfuhrer Konig and August Bohning were sentenced to death by the British Army Court on 19 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.
Flight Lieutenant (Pilot) Jack Hardy Taylor, age 21 was the son of Tom Lowe Taylor and Doris Taylor, of Marple, Cheshire. He is buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, Kleve.
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