Dutch find Czech crew remains at WW2 RAF bomber crash site

Dutch salvage workers have found some bone fragments and scraps of airmen's clothing in the debris of an RAF Wellington bomber shot down over the Netherlands in June 1941.

The Wellington had a six-man Czech crew, five of whom died. It was downed by a German night fighter, crashing at Nieuwe Niedorp, a village about 60km (37 miles) north of Amsterdam.

It had been bombing the port of Bremen.

The dig is part of a wider Dutch project to find wartime crews' remains.

A week ago the Czech Ambassador to the Netherlands, Katerina Sequensova, visited the site, where recovery work began on 25 May. Civil engineers and the Dutch defence ministry are involved, including military forensic identification specialists.

In World War Two the RAF's 311 (Czechoslovak) Squadron had airmen who had fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and had then had combat experience in Poland or France. It was based at RAF East Wretham, near Thetford in Norfolk.

The squadron flew Vickers Wellington and Liberator bombers.