William Clifford Taffender

12/13 June 1941 Wellington T2996 103 Sqn. Take off 23.00 from RAF Newton to bomb railway yards at Osnabruck. Intercepted inbound and shot down by Ofw Hans Rasper 4/NJG1 piloting Bf110 G9+BM with R/O Gunner Uffz. Erich Schreiber. T2996 plunged down a ball of flames, exploded mid air and crashed near Enkhuizen, Netherlands killing all the crew. The Wellington was intercepted above the IJsselmeer and came down on land which belonged to Antoon Langendijk, about 20 meters away from his home situated at the Zwaagdijk Z 22A in Wervershoof. At 00:50 the mayor of Wervershoof Mr. A. Dijk was called by the local air watch. The mayor observed three fires on his way towards the place of the crash, of which two were caused by a wing and the tail of the aircraft. Mr Dijk established that the aircraft was lying in three parts on the land and that it was of English origin, the main body of the aircraft had penetrated the ground to some depth. At 05:00 Oberleutnant Schneider of the Bergen airfield arrived accompanied by some men in order to form a guard. At 06:00 Mr Dijk found the body of a crewman, by orders of Oblt. Schneider the body was put into a coffin and transported to the mortuary near the Roman Catholic Church at the Zwaagdijk. These were the remains of Sergeant Horniman who was buried on June 14th, 1941. At 07:00 Mr Dijk left the crash site and searched the immediate area for possible surviving crewmen in hiding. Sergeant Horniman was buried at Bergen General Cemetery. The body of the aircraft was buried too deep for it to be recovered and the Germans later marked it with a field grave marker adding the names supplied by The Red Cross. In 1966 the crash site was investigated as the land owner wished to build a property there. Wreckage and the remains of the crew were recovered and these crew members were laid to rest at Jonkerbos War Cemetery.

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