Common Wealth War Graves

We have a war graveyard here in Helsingborg. The picture above shows the Common Wealths graveyard with 47 airmen. Two of the men are Australian, nine are from Canada and the rest is British. They all crashed with their planes in southern Sweden during WWII, three of the planes crashed here in Helsingborg. Twenty of them died during the night of August 30, 1944. This particular night is called the Big Airplane Night. Over a hundred airplanes from RAF Bomber Command flew over southern Sweden on their way to Stettin in Germany on a bombing mission. Some of the planes were shot down by German fighter planes that were waiting for them, some were shot down by Swedish anti-aircraft defense. A total of 14 planes crashed in Sweden that night.

This picture show the German part of the war graveyard. 93 Germans are buried here, almost half of them are sailors from a minesweeper that went to the bottom of the sound in a storm in March 1945. Only six sailors survived. The others are airmen that had to crashland in Sweden or was shot down by Swedish anti-aircraft defence.