The crash of this Bernberg built Junkers Ju88 happened on the 10th of November 1941. The aircraft was about to attack a shipping convoy off Whitby in heavy seas, strong wind, low cloud and drizzle. As the crew were about to attack the merchant ship, HMS Kittiwake, its destroyer escort, HMS Quantock, opened fire with all its guns on the aircraft. The aircraft sustained damage, causing the pilot to abort the attack, climb away and flying towards land to the west. Shortly afterwards it was seen to crash at the foot of Blea Wyke below Ravenscar at 17.26hrs. Whether the pilot was attemping a landing on the rough rocky beach is open to conjecture. The ships did not try a rescue attempt because of the heavy seas. The crash claimed the lives of the four airmen on the aircraft, only two being identified. The other two offically listed as "Missing", however two graves at Thornaby Cemetery as marked with "Ein Deutsche Soldat" and it is thought they are their graves. The four airmen were:
Pilot - Oblt Heinz Weber, aged ? Of ? Buried Thornaby on Tees Cemetery.
Observer - Obfhr Karl Schultze, aged 21, of ? Buried Thornaby on Tees Cemetery. Listed in the Register of Deaths as "Schuetz".
Wireless Operator - Obfw Werner Hanel, aged 22, of ? Buried Thornaby on Tees Cemetery.
Air Gunner - Uttz Artur Graber, aged ? Of ? Buried Thornaby on Tees Cemetery.
Only the bodies of Schultze and Hanel were found and identified. The bodies of Weber and Graber were not identified and infact
only one may have been recovered, one is buried at Thornaby in a grave
marked "Ein Deutsche Soldat". The remains of the other may well have been washed out to sea.
The aircraft crashed on the beach located in the centre of the photograph.
The rocky beach near to where it came down.
I visited the site of the crash in June 2002, I found one of the aircrafts crank shafts from an engine and some other peices of metal jammed in the rocks.
The site is in a very inaccessable place and care should be taken if anyone else is planning to visit the site. I planned my trip well before I went and found out when low and high tides were, I still did not have long to walk to the site along the rocky beach before the water began to come in again.
Wreckage jammed in the rocks.
More wreckage at the foot of the cliffs.
The crank shaft of one of the Jumo engines still wedged in the rocks.
More of a Jumo engine was recovered from the site in the 1980s and is now kept at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, York.
