Remembering BJ599
The story of a special relationship On the evening of 28 July 1942 Wellington bomber BJ559 of 75 [NZ] Squadron took off from Feltwell airfield in Norfolk and headed for Hamburg. It was one of 256 aircraft planned to take place in the Mission. Bad weather prevented several of them from taking off and, for others, including BJ559, many did not return. This story has a New Zealand and Freemasonry connection which has endured to this day.
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he Navigator on the fateful flight was 19-year old New Zealander, Pilot Officer Murray Ellis Carncross. Murray embarked for Canada in May 1941 and was attached to the Royal Canadian Air Force the following month. He was then attached to the RAF where he was later commissioned. The flightpath took the bomber across the North Sea to a position near the mouth of the river Elbe and then direct to Hamburg where it achieved its objective before heading south towards Soltau, which was its waypoint for the aircraft to turn and head for England.
At some time during the attack BJ559 caught fire, possibly from heavy flak. Still on fire it headed towards Soltau, managing to follow its designated course. In the area of Steinbeck, some 35 km from Hamburg, there was a battery of searchlights, which coned the approaching aircraft. The pilot was probably blinded by the searchlights and, with the fire still burning, he appears to have made a steep dive in an attempt to extinguish the flames. The plane did not recover and crashed into a cornfield about 3 km from the searchlights. All members of the crew perished and were buried in the Municipal Cemetery at Stade. They
Murray Carncross.
were later reinterred and buried in the Cemetery at Becklingen, constructed under the direction of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The story took on a new and poignant twist, nearly 70 years later, when Cynthia Coomber, wife and mother respectively of NZ Pacific Lodge Freemasons and former soldiers, Brian and Martin Coomber, read an article published in the Dominion Post in November 2009. It referred to German customs officer and army reservist Hans-Heinrich Meyer who had met New Zealanders in Italy, where he had laid a wreath on behalf of his army unit at a ceremony marking the
THE WELLINGTON BOMBER: A MAJOR STEP IN AIRCRAFT DESIGN The Wellington Bomber, in which Murray Carncross and others so tragically lost their lives was designed by Sir Barnes Wallis, best known for his bouncing bombs, which destroyed the Ruhr dams. It was a major advancement
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in aircraft design. Sir Barnes drew upon his experience of designing pre-war lightweight airships. His principal breakthrough was the development of geodesic curves formed from alloy strip, creating an immensely strong helical structure. This could provide the outer shape of wings and fuselage without internal bracing, which could then be used for fuel tanks and payload. The resulting plane was superior to the Air Ministry specification, outstripping any other bomber in terms of speed, bomb load, range and ceiling. www.freemasonsnz.org
LEFT  Sir Barnes Wallis at work. ABOVE  Geodesic designed Wellingtons.
Eleven thousand were produced, becoming the mainstay of Bomber Command until 1943 and continuing in other theatres until the end of the war. The Wellington was later used as a jet engine testbed and to pioneer high altitude pressure cabins.