SWNS_LANCASTER_RING_11

Archive photo of a Lancaster bomber in WW2, similar to the one which has been discovered in France. See SWNS story SWBOMBER; The wreckage of a missing RAF Lancaster bomber has been found buried in a French farmer’s field – 68 years after it was shot down by a German Luftwaffe ace on D-Day. The tangled wreck is believed to be the Lancaster piloted by Wing Cmdr “Jimmy” Carter, whose dawn mission was to attack a German coastal battery at Pont Du Hoc in the crucial hours before the Allied invasion on June 6, 1944. A wave of bombers flattened the gun emplacements but Carter’s Lancaster – call-sign Z-Zebra – came under fire from Focke-Wulf fighter pilot Helmut Eberspacher, who shot down three bombers in the space of four minutes. The dramatic discovery of the missing Lancaster was made by British aviation archaeologist Tony Graves, who has excavated over 400 Battle of Britain aircraft and spent years pinpointing the exact spot where the bomber crashed near Carentan in the Normandy countryside.