Page 100 - John Francis Ryan

This photograph, taken from the hamlet of Hӧfstetten shows the crash site. The road up to the
wood is where the local scrap man would have traversed with his horse and cart over a number of
days, removing the remains of the aluminium airframe. It is most likely that some of the engines
and propellers are still in the ground. They are too deep (some 5 to 10 feet down) to be removed,
the roots of the trees would make it an expensive operation.

On the next page can be seen a ʻCookieʼ on its bomb trolly showing its three Anvil type detonators,
the bomb being armed when it falls free of the bomb bay. The safety pin in the nose of the
detonator, secured to the Lancasters airframe is pulled from the detonator. The propeller revolving
in the slipstream as the bomb falls for a set time, it then arming the bomb. As the bomb was
thrown clear of the Lancaster on impact with the ground, this sequence was not completed and
thus the bomb coming to rest in the wood in a semi-safe state. The top picture opposite shows a
4’000 Lb Cookie exploding at RAF Croft airfield in North Yorkshire in 1945. The bomb completely
destroying the Lancaster. This type of accident was rare, only happening three
times during the war.