Flt Lt Tatnall (sixth from left) with the instructors and students of No. 3 Air Course, 20 ERFTS Gravesend, March 1939.
Tatnall was confirmed in
rank as Pilot Officer 1930 abd was promoted to Flt Lt and posted to 8 FTS
Montrose 1.1.36.
He was transferred to the
Reserve 28.1.1937.
Tatnall was the CO of 20
ERFTS Gravesend and was one of Mike Lithgow's instructors, and, along with
the other Gravesend instructors almost certainly flew N-5490.
By 1st March 1940 he was
a Sqn Ldr. By 1st March 1942 he was a Wg Cdr. As acting Gp,
Capt, he received the OBE in the New Year's Honours list 1944.
Six weeks later he was dead.
He was killed aboard 7 Sqn Pathfinder Lancaster III, JB414 MG-Y that took off at 1716 hrs 15.2.1944 from Oakington for Berlin.
The raid in question was
the last-but-one of the so-called 'Battle of Berlin' (Winter 1943/44).
This was the time of Bomber Command's worst losses.
The raid is covered in some
detail in Martin Middlebrook's book 'The Berlin Raids' (Viking, 1988).
It was the heaviest raid
of the entire war on Berlin; 891 aircraft were despatched and 2,643 tons
of bombs were dropped which included 470 x 4,000lb 'Cookies'
and 15 x 8,000lb bombs.
Despite widespread damage including many industrial areas, very many of
the bombs dropped in open countryside due to poor visibility.
The Nachtjagd were ready
and prepared; Bomber Command lost forty-two bombers with another five crashed
or abandoned over England.
Most losses that night were
suffered by 7 Squadron (Pathfinder Force) which lost four Lancasters; the
men lost included Tatnall and two Squadron Leaders
plus the following decorations:
two DSOs, one CGM, eight DFCs, seven DFMs and Tatnall's OBE. These were
highly experienced Pathfinder aircrew and could not be replaced easily.
Wg Cdr Tatnall had just joined
7 Sqn. He was flying that night as a second pilot in the crew of
Sqn Ldr John Alfred Hegman, a New Zealander and a highly experienced pilot.
Tatnall was on a so-called
'familiarization flight', to get to know the procedures within the squadron
before he would fly with his own crew.
They were shot down over Germany while on the way to their target near Neustrelitz. Only the tailgunner survived. The wireless operator is still missing.
Tatnall and Hegman are buried
in the Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery. The site Cemetery was selected
by the British Occupation Authorities and Commission officials jointly
in 1945,
soon after hostilities ceased.
Graves were brought to the cemetery from the Berlin area and from eastern
Germany. The great majority of those buried there
approximately 80 per cent
of the total, were airmen who were lost in the air raids over Berlin and
the towns in eastern Germany. The remainder were men who died
as prisoners of war, some
of them in the forced march into Germany from camps in Poland, in front
of the advancing Russians.
Wg Cdr Tatnall is buried
in the Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery.
The cemetery contains 3,595
Commonwealth burials of the Second World War, 397 of them unidentified.
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