Page 4 - Roland Robert John Young

Dresden operation 13 /14 February 1945
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At 21:25 pm on the evening of 13 February 1945 Roland’s Lancaster PD 232 O-Oboe2 took off
from Fiskerton to bomb the German city of Dresden.
Main Force Lancaster squadrons assembling between Sheffield and Reading.

Main Force consisted of:

No. 8 (Pathfinder) Group (60 Lancasters)

(Including the Master Bomber, call sign ʻStrongmanʼ)

No. 1 Group (248 Lancasters)

No. 3 Group (151 Lancasters)
No. 6 Group (65 Lancasters)

Main Force route was over the English Channel at Beachy Head to Boulogne then behind Allied
lines to a position south of Strasburg where the Lancasters turned north east
towards Leipzig.

Their approach to Reich airspace being denied to German radar by the use of ʻWindowʼ,
(Strips of aluminium cut to the German radar’s frequency length), the procedure known by the
code name ʻMandrelʼ by No.100 Group aircraft flying set courses and deploying ʻWindowʼ at set
pre-determined times.

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By 00:52 am on the morning of the 14 February 1945 a message was sent to the Dresden Air
Defence bunker that a bomber force some 78 miles in length was overflying the lower
Saxony town of Bamberg.

At about 01:00 am on the same morning a villager noted in their diary that two aircraft were seen
to collide over the lower Saxony village of Remlingen some 10 miles north of Wurzburg and some
37 miles north west of Bamberg.
Main Force attack on Dresden started at 01:21am and continued until 01:55 am.

So it would appear that these two Lancasters collided en-route to the target.

Records indicate that two Lancasters were missing in this area

PB183 C - Charlie of 405 Squadron from RAF Gransden Lodge (No. 8 (Pathfinder) Group and
PD232 O-Oboe 2 of 576 Squadron (No. 1 Group.)

The 405 Squadron Lancaster was a Pathfinder, probably a ʺbacker upʺ. This describes Pathfinder
crew’s within the Main Force bomber stream armed with target indicators.

These crew’s would reinforce the marking as required by the Master Bomber. The initial marking
being done by the Master Bomber and crews known as ʺilluminatorsʺ.