'To hold parts of the plane my uncle died in was very poignant' – D-Day airmen who never made it home

At 2.56am, the RAF's 97 Squadron departed from RAF Coningsby to prepare the ground with an aerial bombardment of the gun positions on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, between the US landing grounds of Omaha to the east, and Utah to the west.

It was recorded in the Operations Record Book (ORB): "Beautiful morning, us going in, the Americans going out."

By 4.50am, the squadron turned to head home. The mission had been accomplished, with extensive damage to the German positions.

It was not without loss, though. Just after 5am, Luftwaffe fighter pilot Oberleutnant Helmut Eberspacher shot down three Lancasters in five minutes from his Focke-Wulf 190.

Among them was the leading Lancaster, ND739 – call-sign Z-Zebra – and none of its eight-man crew were ever seen again.

In his log, Oberleutnant Eberspacher said: "As soon as I took course I noticed above a row of British bombers flying below the moonlit cloud cover.

"Similar to a shadow theatre, the bombers stood out against the clouds.

"However they could not see me against the dark earth. We were at war and the enemy had to be combated, and I was in a favourable flying position. Within a few minutes, three British Lancaster bombers went down in flames."

Among those who perished was 33-year-old Sqn Ldr Martin Bryan-Smith, from Wolverley, near Kidderminster, the tail gunner on the aircraft.

The ORB recorded: "As we turned, we could see that we’d give the target a ‘right prang’ but saw Z Zebra go down".

Sqn Ldr Bryan-Smith, awarded the DFC and Bar, and mentioned in dispatches, had served with the RAF volunteer reserve since the outbreak of war in 1939. He had survived many missions, 16 in the previous few months, including targets in Hanover, Mannheim, Leipzig, Kassel, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Berlin. Like the rest of the crew, he had volunteered to take part in D-Day.