From Balclutha to bombing Berlin

• Published date: 18 April 2024
• Publication title: Clutha Leader

Flight Lieutenant John Russell Petrie, DFC, of Foxton and Balclutha

was the pilot of Lancaster bomber III, JB552 of No.7 Squadron, Oakington, Cambridgeshire, England, Royal Air Force Bomber Command.

At 16.20hrs on December 16, 1943 he took off for a raid on Berlin.

That night he was shot down at Werlte, near Cloppenburg by night-fighter pilot Oberleutnant Dietrich Schmidt of the 8./NJG 1, flying a Messershmitt Bf 110: G-4 G9+AS from Twente Airfield in Holland.

Flt Lt Petrie and his crew were all killed.

Pilot/Captain: Flight Lieutenant John Russell Petrie, DFC, RNZAF. Navigator: Squadron Leader Arthur Gibson, DFC, RAFVR. Air Gunner: Flight Sergeant Alfred Henry Hartshorn, RAFVR. WOp/Air Gunner: Flying Officer Terence W. Jackson-Baker, RAFVR. Bomb Aimer: Flying Officer Ian Roy MacDonald, RAFVR. Flight Engineer: Pilot Officer Arthur William Osborn, RAFVR. Air Gunner: Flight Sergeant Clifford James Seery, RAFVR.

This action of 16/17 December 1943, came one month into the ‘‘Battle of Berlin’’ — Bomber Command’s all-out attempt to win the war by attacking the German capital and other key cities.

It was not the enemy however, but Bomber Command’s perennial enemy — the weather — that caused the RAF’s mass casualties that night, when the system for getting RAF bomber aircraft safely back to their bases fell apart.

Survivors of the huge force of 483 Lancasters and 15 Mosquitoes which had taken part in the bombing raid on Berlin returned...