crew The German aircraft was a Junkers Ju 88 night fighter from Luftwaffe Nachtjagdgeschwader 3, Squadron 4, piloted by the fighter ace Unteroffizier (Corporal) Bruno Rupp. Two other crew members, by the names of Eckert and Biell, were also aboard. Rupp engaged the Lancaster from a height of 3600m, and it became his 11th shootdown of the war. In total, Rupp would later reach 16 confirmed shootdowns. Bomber crew and burial The killed airmen were initially buried in the heathland at the site of the crash by the German Wehrmacht. A white wooden cross was raised at the grave by German soldiers, with text (in German) reading "Hier ruhen 7 unbekannte anglo amerik. Flieger 29.8.1944" (English: "Here lie 7 unknown Anglo-Americans. Airmen, 29.8.1944"). On 3 February 1947, British authorities exhumed the bodies, placed them in coffins, and re-buried them at Vorupør Cemetery. The same plot also contains the remains of an unidentified British soldier, who was washed ashore on the beach near Nørre Vorupør in Autumn 1944. He was initially buried on the shore by the Wehrmacht and was then, following the German surrender, exhumed and moved to the churchyard by locals on 14 June 1945. Descriptions by locals It remains uncertain exactly which bombs were carried by the Lancaster, but it is clear that it released three bombs over the farm meadows at Koustrup Møllegaard, Sønderhå (approximately 10km south by south-east of Ålvand) prior to the crash. The bombs, which were probably photoflash bombs, caused damage to buildings in the area. Locals described an intense flash that temporarily turned night to day, followed by a loud bang and shaking. After the Lancaster was hit, the crew would have had good reason to eject any ordnance over a sparsely populated area, partly to prevent civilian casualties but also to minimise the chance of the crew being killed by explosions if the aircraft was to crash. The photoflashes left several craters at Koustrup Møllegaard; during subsequent summers, workers at the farm were tasked with filling in the holes when there was no other work to be carried out. Agnes Møller (born 1909), who lived on the farm at the time, wrote of the bombs in her memoirs: In Nørre Vorupør, locals reported an enormous ball of light so brilliant that "you could see a matchstick in the gravel". References Accidents and incidents involving Royal Air Force aircraft Aviation accidents and incidents