Sidney Edward Abrams

Sidney Edward Abrams was a Warrant Officer navigator in RAF Bomber Command, serving with No. 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds in Lincolnshire. The squadron flew Avro Lancasters as part of No. 1 Group, and alongside the main bombing offensive its crews were regularly sent on mine-laying operations — code-named “gardening” — sowing mines in enemy shipping lanes and harbour approaches.

On the evening of 6 January 1945, Abrams took off in Lancaster III PB637, coded PM-L, for a mine-laying sortie in the Baltic. The aircraft never returned and no signal was received from it; it was lost without trace, and the crew were in time presumed to have come down in the sea. Abrams died on 7 January 1945. His six crewmates were lost with him: Flight Lieutenant C. Pearton, Pilot Officers W. E. Burcher and H. J. Hutcheson, and Sergeants D. Fell, C. H. Palmer and G. Williams.

Having no known grave, Sidney Abrams is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial at Englefield Green in Surrey, on Panel 269 — one of more than 20,000 Commonwealth airmen recorded there who were lost flying from or over the United Kingdom and the seas around it and who have no grave but the sky and the water.