Name
Wolfgang Eurl
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
09/04/1941
21
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Observer Officer
German Luftwaffe
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
HITCHIN CEMETERY
Grave NW 404
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Not on the Hitchin memorials
Biography
This spelling of his surname is taken from British records. It would probably be more correctly spelt as ‘EUERL’ as shown in German records.
A Heinkel 111 (H5 3628) belonging to a special pathfinder unit III/K.926 of 9 Squadron of the German Luftwaffe had taken off from Le Bourget in France on the night of the 8th/9th April 1941 and crashed on farmland close to Church Lane, Kimpton within 300 yards of Bendish House the home of Mr F. Russell Wood.
The Heinkel had been on an operational mission to Coventry with Brighton as a secondary target and was loaded with incendiary bombs and flares when it was attacked by a night-fighter, possibly a Defiant of 264 Squadron based at Luton at the time. The nightfighter turned on a searchlight and fired two bursts of machine-gun fire. After crashing, the Heinkel burnt for some time with machine-gun bullets exploding in all directions. The Hitchin Fire Brigade was called to put out the blaze.
The aircraft had only been completed the previous month at the Heinkel works at Rostock in Northwest Germany and was part of a Squadron formed at Poix near Amiens at the end of 1940. It had been specially fitted with Y-GERAT pathfinder equipment which had two transmitters to fix bearing and range from beacons at Poix, Cherbourg and Cassel. The aircraft travelled along the radio beams created and released the marker flares and incendiary bombs on radioed instructions. By the time of the crash the British had instituted countermeasures using transmitters at Alexandra Palace and Deacon Hill Salisbury which jammed the beams or bent them so that the markers and incendiaries were dropped in the wrong places.
The five crew bailed out successfully with the exception of the Observer. They were:-
- Lieut Tengler - Pilot. Found unconscious, still attached to his parachute harness, by local Home Guard member David Stedman.
- Reitmayer - Flight Mechanic. Wounded in the arm.
- Faber - Radio Operator and air-gunner aged 21 . Wounded in the hands.
- Zander - Operated the Y-GERAT pathfinder equipment He was uninjured.
- Wolfgang Eurl (Euerl) - Observer. He was found dead the following morning still attached to his parachute harness on a ploughed field about 100 yards from the road between Breachwood Green and the Lilley Bottom road. He had a neck wound and was killed either by machine-gun fire or on landing. His body was taken to Hitchin mortuary and was buried in Grave NW 404 in Hitchin Cemetery with full military honours.
He had been born on the 5th February 1922 in Nuremberg and his parents lived in the Erhardstrasse, Nuremberg.
In 1976, part of the aircraft was in use as a chicken run at West End farm in the Kimpton area.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Death Certificate of W. Eurl, Mr A. M Foster, Mr F. Peters, Various German sources, Herts Pictorial dated 15th April 1941
