The airmen’s grave in Autrans cemetery

• I AM looking for descendants of Ronald Denis Clement, a Royal Air Force sergeant from West Hampstead who died on February 8 1944 aged just 22.

He was buried in Autrans cemetery in the Isère department of the Rhône-Alpes, France.

Sgt Clement was one of a crew of seven airmen (five British and two Canadian) who took off from RAF Tempsford on the evening of February 7 1944 in a Halifax bomber.

Their mission was to parachute 15 containers for the French resistance. During this night of full moon the region was very cold and snowy. The pilot and the navigator did not see the lights when they flew over the drop zone and turned back.

The weather conditions were very bad and the plane lost altitude and hit the top of the mountain at 1,600 metres. The plane exploded and the crew all killed.

I know Sgt Clement had a sister and a brother but I don’t know their first names. Their parents Samuel Robert and Amelia Clement were living in West Hampstead. The father died in 1949 and mother in 1963. Can anybody help me trace his family?

MICHEL PIRAT
f1pqa@orange.fr
– see also FRANCE CRASHES 39/45