227 Sqn Lancaster

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Member for

16 years 1 month

Posts: 93

I am looking for any information and or photographs of Lancaster PB805 of 227 Sqn based at Balderton in late 1944 . The reason for this is that i am making a 1/72 scale model for a friend whose father was the rear gunner on this machine , i have been searching the web for info but it seems hard to come by . I have had some luck with a contact on Britmodeller with some pages from the Sqn ORB which confirm the aircraft and codes 9J-M for Mike any help would be much appreciated

Thanks
Simon

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18 years 2 months

Posts: 7,742

I was doing some research on RAF Balderton and 227 Squadron in Newark Air Museum’s Archive yesterday and there is a bound publication about the squadron that came from a contact of mine in Canada.

I’m back there tomorrow so I will have a look to see what (if anything) I can find on Lancaster PB805, 9J-M.

The father of my Canadian contact was with 227 Squadron at Balderton and Strubby, but the only photographs of his that I have access to is with Lancaster PA283, 9J-J.

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15 years 3 months

Posts: 923

hi, morning,
can only supply basic details from Avro Lancaster by Harry Holmes- 227sq Dec 1944, crashed 3rd Sept.1945, 5MU-Sept 1945, scrapped Nov. 1946.

regards,
jack...

Member for

16 years 1 month

Posts: 93

Thanks Twinotter23 any thing is more than i have now , photographs of 227 sqn Lancasters seem particularly hard to come by . My friends father was Sgt J A Wilkins he was the rear gunner on 9J-M on a number of occasions with F/O Horton ,his regular pilot he was on a raid on 26/12/44 in this aircraft a raid on St Vith of note on this raid the ORB recorded flak holes in mid upper turret . Also thanks to you Jack i assume the crash was more of a forced landing if it was then scrapped

Thanks Simon

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16 years 1 month

Posts: 93

As a sidenote it suprised me that 227 Sqn are not mentioned in one of my references for the model i'm building , the Modellers Datafile from Sam Publications seem to have overlooked them

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11 years 3 months

Posts: 119

There is a small photo of a belly landed 227 Lancaster in Norfolk in "Lancaster at War". It is PD348.
The quality isn't great.

I see the Squadron was disbanded after a year of flying the Lancaster, which might explain the rarity of photos.

Member for

18 years 2 months

Posts: 7,742

Space cadet – sadly there were no photograph’s specific to Lancaster PB805, 9J-M in the 227 Squadron publication in the NAM Archive.

There were a couple of poor quality views of squadron aircraft c/w crews, which I captured and I can email these over to you if you send me an email address via the PM system. These aircraft carried nose-art, which may be of interest, but I could not tie them to specific airframes (serial & code not visible in the pictures).

In the booklet Lancaster PB805 was not listed as a loss either, but it is a fairly old publication and more details may have come through later. The only other reference I found to the aircraft was as a post-war write-off, IRRC via 58MU at Newark.

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8 years

Posts: 1

Hi simon I know this is four years old but I do have a Photo of 9J-M PB805and all of her crew[ATTACH=CONFIG]258898[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]258899[/ATTACH]

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Member for

18 years 2 months

Posts: 7,742

In the light of this thread surfacing again I thought the RAF Balderton commemorative event & book launch at Newark Air Museum on Sunday 8th April 2018, might be of interest to a few forumites!

http://www.newarkairmuseum.org/RAF_Balderton_Commem

Apologies Stagsman - welcome to the forum! :)