In 1998, a Dutch farmer turned up pieces of an aircraft in his field, including an engine, a full propellor, and a wallet with a driver’s license marked “Dennis”.
When the volunteers from Belgium’s Planehunters Recovery Team heard about the story some years later, they set out to investigate.
It was 2012, and HF 852 was giving up the last of its story after being shot down on a raid to Dusseldorf, July 31-Aug 1, 1942.
The recovery group got to work, digging, sifting, putting small pieces together. They called the air force, which took the big pieces away. That wallet really caught their eye, and when the aircraft was identified, the owner was revealed through some dogged research.
His name was Dennis Kurtz.
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Dennis Haig Kurtz was born in 1922 to John and Mary. He was one of 12 children who grew up during the Depression at 168 New Street, Burlington (on the western shore of Lake Ontario).
We know a fair amount about him – he loved to sing, was in the Cub Scouts, and then Army Cadets, and he listed his favourite sport as swimming. He completed most of his senior matriculation at Burlington High School by 1939.
Joining the Royal Canadian Air Force in November of 1940, Dennis went through the regular testing and interviews. They found him “Clean and well-built, rather slow but dependable … musically inclined and not very athletic.”
After going through the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, Dennis graduated as an Air Observer (navigator/bomb aimer), so we know he was good at math.
Eventually, he would be posted to No. 16 Operational Training Unit, RAF Upper Heyford, transitioning to the Vickers Wellington as a bomb aimer. His crew included three from Canada, one from California, and the one of Newfoundland.
OTU was supposed to be the last step before operations but in the middle of 1942 Bomber Command was still building strength and thus short of aircraft for important targets. On July 31, No. 92 (Training) Group was asked to provide more than 100 crews of the over 500 hitting Dusseldorf, Germany.
Wellington 1C HF852 took off at 2355 with its Sprog (rookie) crew and headed east to join the bomber stream. Near Elsendorp, Holland, it was shot down in flames (possibly by Hauptman Streib, of 1/NJG 1), diving into the fields.
Killed were Kurtz, navigator L.G. Harvie, gunner E.F. Hueston, pilot E.G. Robertson, and wireless operator H.L. Cox. Their bodies were removed from the wreckage at the time, and most of the wreck taken away.
No. 92 Group lost 11 of 105 aircraft that night – more than 10 per cent.
Per Ardua ad Astra to a brave crew.
POSTSCRIPT: Through the effort of the Planehunters group, Dennis’s wallet was returned in 2012 to his nephew, Jerry Large.
