Winnipeg WW II pilot sacrificed self so crew could parachute to safety from doomed bomber

Robert Harris leans out the cockpit canopy of an Avro Lancaster bomber, his left arm resting casually on the sliding window's guide, a slight smile testing the corner of his Clark Gable moustache.

He would be shot down over Germany in the same type of plane only weeks before the end of the Second World War, his body never to be found.

"That closure is never quite there — not knowing," said Winnipegger Betty Hannem, Harris's only child, now 80.

She never met her dad, who only learned after he had been deployed that he was going to be a father. The news came via letter from his wife, Margaret, back home in the small town of Binscarth, Man.

Hannem was born July 31, 1944, the exact day Harris marked his 31st birthday. His final one.

She was eight months old when he died.

On the evening of March 7, 1945, Harris was piloting a Lancaster carrying his crew of six — part of heavy bomber squadron No. 550 of the Royal Air Force — on a raid on Dessau, Germany, southwest of the capital of Berlin.

"It was pretty much the end of the war and the allies were putting on the pressure, trying to finish it off," Hannem said. "But there was still a lot of really good little fighter pilots out there."

One of those pilots sighted and fired on Harris's Lancaster, which was badly damaged. Worried about the explosions from the arsenal of bombs still aboard, the crew headed for the doors and parachuted. All but Harris, that is.

"Flying Officer Harris maintained control of the aircraft long enough for all his crew to bail out; he went down with the aircraft," a citation states on the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum website.

Two other crew members died while three were captured and imprisoned in war camps. They were liberated at the end of April.

"Piece by piece, each crew member who was on that airplane was eventually accounted for through personal effects, through survivor stories, through prisoners," said Richard Randell, Hannem's son and Harris's grandson.

"The other two who died, their remains were removed but no remains of Robert whatsoever [were found] in the wreckage, in the accounting, in the stories."

Air force telegrams arrived, first saying Harris was missing in action and then announcing he was presumed dead in the wreckage just outside Colbitz. Additional letters from the Department of National Defence offered sympathies but no resolution.