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By: - 9th September 2021 at 12:36 Permalink
Hi, My name is Michael Brown. The pilot who was killed, Stanley Brown, was my father's brother. I have got his squadron flight log, which indicates his crash ( the entry was completed by his commanding officer ). He is buried in the nearby cemetery at Vaernes.
Regards
Michael Brown
email: mbrown11@bigpond.net.au
By: - 9th September 2021 at 13:02 Permalink
Michael, thank you for taking the trouble to come back on this, and sorry for the loss of your uncle.
Do the documents which you have confirm the site of the accident, I wonder?
By: - 9th September 2021 at 14:04 Permalink
Unfortunately not. I have just got his official log which just says 'Aeros-Formation', then 'Crashed-Killed'., on the day of his crash. His total flight time that day was recorded as 1 hr 5 minutes, so he can't have been far from the Vaernes airfield. There were other attached papers clipped to the log, but these have been lost over the years before I got the log.
It does also confirm that he was in Spitfire SK-E, but that is also known from the wreckage. And the date 28 July 1945.
His brother ( my father ) died in 2007
Regards
Michael Brown
By: - 9th September 2021 at 14:15 Permalink
It was always understood in our family that he crashed into overhead power transmission wires, so it must have been a location reasonably close to Vaernes, which carried such transmission wires. From the log entries, they had been doing formation flying all that week, so an area where they would go to practice such formations.
Michael Brown
Posts: 2,598
By: paulmcmillan - 13th September 2018 at 10:14 - Edited 13th September 2018 at 10:23
In this months Aeroplane - There is an article about the recovery of MK997 and in the discussion with majority owner Runar Vassbotten (Of Norwegian Flying Aces) he says " Earlier this spring we found another Spitfire IX, MJ785, which crashed during the summer of 1945 while being operated by No.165 Squadron in Norway. So we then have the possibility to rebuild MJ785 as our second two-seater (EN570 will be a two seater) and Keep MK997 as a single seater)
MJ785 was being flown by Warrant Officer Stanley Victor Douglas Brown #1335132 of 165 Squadron RAF when it crashed 28.07.1945 and he was killed He was Born 11.01.1922
I believe it hit power cables and crashed while undertaking performance aerobatics at 10.45- The location is variously described as "
Killed when his Spitfire went down east of Trondheim, Norway or twenty miles north of
Trondheim (which would make it the other side of Trondheimsfjord
"
Has any one got a better location ?