ADOLF Hitler's last surviving operations officer and the man who personally bombed great swathes of the North of England is coming to York to tell some of his former wartime foes how he did it.

Former RAF servicemen living in North Yorkshire are preparing to come face to face with Oberst Hans Herrmann, one of the Luftwaffe's most successful bombers.

Herrmann, who flew more than 300 bombing missions during the Second World Warand was later put in charge by Hitler of all night fighter operations against the RAF, is coming to the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington.

Credited with bringing down nine British Lancaster and Halifax bombers, Herrmann, who holds The Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, will be giving a lecture at the airfield from where many RAF raids set off.

Herrmann bombed the Vickers-Armstrong factory in Newcastle and dropped mines into the entrance to Sunderland harbour.

His most spectacularly destructive success came in April 1941 , when he scored a direct hit on a British freighter, Clan Frazer, in a Greek harbour. The explosion was so big it destroyed 10 ships, the entire harbour, shattered windows in Athens 10 miles away and very nearly brought down his own plane.

Squadron Leader John Fisher, 81, of Husthwaite, near Easingwold, who flew Halifax bombers during the war, will be meeting Herrmann for the first time at the lecture.

He said today that he bore no grudges. "One had to respect them," he said. "They were doing the same sort of job. It was not the individuals we were fighting but the regime.

"I think it will be strange to meet him, but not unpleasant. A lot of this is historic stuff, and one was part of it."

Although Herrmann, now 86, is Hitler's last surviving Operations Officer and Tactician, he was not a card-carrying member of the Nazi party, according to David Tappin, who is organising the Elvington lecture.

He said: "He believed they were correct in doing what they did, the same as the people in our own air force did.

"It may seem hard to swallow that we were trying to kill each other but it is mutual respect these days. It was as dangerous for the Germans as it was for the British."

Mr Tappin said he did not know whether Herrmann had been part of the raids on York and North Yorkshire but said he thought it quite possible.

In May 1945, Herrmann became a prisoner of the Russians and spent 10 gruelling years in gulags. On his release, he became a law student. Still a practising lawyer today, one of his clients is the controversial revisionist historian David Irving.

Tickets for Oberst Herrmann's lecture, which is on Saturday, March 14, at 7.30pm, cost £10 and can be booked by calling 01423 887313.

The Yorkshire Air Museum is now on the Internet at http://www.eveningpress.co.uk/clientsites/yorkshireairmuseum.

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