161 In February 1944, Charles joined 192 Squadron, piloting Halifax bombers from RAF Foulsham. Included in Charles’s missions was the notorious raid on Nürnberg on 30 March 1944. The raid was the costliest one-night mission for the RAF during World War Two, with 96 bombers and 545 crewmen lost, more RAF casualties than in the entire Battle of Britain. Charles and his crew survived the Nürnberg calamity; however, in the early hours of April 25th, as his Halifax reached the Belgian coast ahead of the Karlsruhe raid, it was spotted by a German Messerschmitt Bf 110 Night fighter. Luftwaffe ace, Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, piloted the Messerschmitt. Nicknamed The Spook of St. Trond after his base in occupied Belgium, Schnaufer recorded 121 victories against Allied aircraft through World War Two and, in 1944, was awarded The Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, Germany’s highest military decoration at the time. His navigator, Lt. Fritz Rumpelhardt, later observed that Schnaufer was not interested in “wine, women, and song,” unlike other air crews, but in successful missions. He remains the highest-scoring night-fighter ace in history. Schnaufer died in a car crash in France in 1950 at age 28. At 2:38 a.m. on April 25, Schnaufer shot down Charles’s Halifax, which crashed in a farmer’s field near the town of Haasdonk, southwest of Antwerp. He would shoot down four bombers within 37 minutes that night. Equipped for The Messerschmitt Bf 110 Nightfighter. Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer.
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