Vickers Wellington Mk II Revell 2002 tool 2014 box

On the 5th August 1941 at 22.25 hour a Vickers Wellington II bomber W5421 PH-G of 12 Squadron took off from RAF Binbrook bound with 12 other Wellingtons for a raid on the railway marshalling yards in the German city of Aachen.
The Wellington had engine trouble just south of Aachen and was unable to bomb the target. The crew then jettisoned their bombs 15 to 20 miles from the target and turned for home. Over Antwerp the starboard engine caught fire and they began to lose height to 800 feet and they realised they could not reach England. The plane did a wheels down landing at 02.19 on the 6th August at the Antwerp-Deurne airfield in occupied Belgium.
The crew destroyed the aircraft to prevent it falling into enemy hands and escaped by firing 12 emergency flares into the fuselage before a German fire-tender arrived. The Germans probably believed the crew had been trapped in the burning aircraft and only in the morning light realised that there were no bodies in the plane. This gave the crew valuable time to climb the barbed wire and escape. After climbing the fence they split into two groups of three.
Flt Lt Roy Brouard Langlois (the pilot, nicknamed Daddy Long Legs) was later captured, finishing up as a POW in Stalag Luft III at Sagan. He took part in ‘The Great Escape’ on March 24th 1944 but was recaptured and returned to Sagan. He earned a Distinguished Flying Cross and attained the rank of Wing Commander before retiring from the RAF in 1962. He died in 1993 aged 76.