The DayThe LiberatorCrashed onChichester

KEN GREEN

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NEW CHICHESTER PAPERS

The series of monographs devoted to local history in Chichester, known as The Chichester Papers, were published by the City Council in the period 1955-68. The monographs, fifty-two in all, were edited by Francis Steer (1912-78), sometime County Archivist for both East and West Sussex.

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Chichester Local History Society has now deemed it appropriate to establish a new series of monographs under the title New Chichester Papers. These new monographs, comprising material too long for the Society’s annual journal, will be published by the Society in association with the University of Chichester. To promote the work of the Society in this regard, there has been established an Advisory Editorial Group, and members of the Society and others who wish to offer material for publication are asked to contact any member of the Group for further advice. Group details are given inside the back cover of this publication.

Front cover: A B-24 Liberator, Diamond Lil‚ built in 1940, currently owned and flown by the Commemorative Air Force, a Texas-based non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and showing historical aircraft at air shows throughout the US and Canada. One of twenty planes allocated to the RAF early in WW2, it never actually made it to Europe, since it was damaged in an accident in Canada. Subsequently refitted as a transport aircraft, it was flown in the USA for the remainder of the war by Consolidated Aircraft Corporation as a company aircraft. Although it lacks the ball turret and waist gun positions on later variations, including the ‘Chichester Liberator’, it gives a fine impression of this huge and versatile plane. After the war, in 1948, Diamond Lil was sold to the Continental Can Company who fitted it with sleeping berths and reclining chairs for use by company executives. It was restored to its original condition in 1968.

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The Day the LiberatorCrashed

on Chichester

11th May 1944

by

KEN GREEN

Chichester Local History Society in association with

The University of Chichester2010

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The official accident report completed by the Police on May 11th 1944. (Courtesy West Sussex Record Office)

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In May 1944, just a few weeks before D-Day, an American bomber crashed on the city

Eyewitness Accounts

MY OWN MEMORIESIn the front boundary wall of St John’s House, a Victorian property in the Hornet, there is patch of brickwork newer than that around it. I can remember seeing the wall, punctured in that place by a large aero engine.

Just before four o’clock the previous day, Thursday May 11th 1944, I was eleven years old and in my last year at the Central Boys School in New Park Road. I was in the Recreation Ground, on my way home when there was a loud explosion. This was followed by a mountain of flame, several hundred feet high, rising from behind the cottages in St Pancras.

I rushed home to Green Lane, where we lived; my mother had anxiously come to meet me. A column of black smoke had now replaced the flames. Later that day we heard that an American Liberator, B24, bomber had crashed on the allotments and the laundry in Velyn Avenue, behind Kenneth Long and Company’s timber yard.

At the time St John’s House was home to St John’s private preparatory school, the building was shared with St James’ Infants’ School, which had been transferred there for the duration of the war when the RAF had taken over their premises in St James’ Road as an auxiliary control room for Tangmere aerodrome.

MEMORIES OF OTHER EYEWITNESSESThe BBC have collected and published wartime reminiscences on their WW2 site, and in one of these John Page, a former classmate, gives a poignant account of the day’s events. He relates: ‘It was about 4pm on a sunny spring afternoon when I meandered with a group of school friends towards our homes in S.E. Chichester. We turned off The Hornet on to the unmade road that led to Velyn Avenue. Some commotion from those in front caused me to look up: I saw a large black shape heading towards us, and I ran as fast as I could back to the Hornet and to home, some 400 yards or so away. I must have heard the noise of the crash, but it is the visual impact that has stayed with me.’

Peter Gardner, who also lived in Green Lane, wrote: ‘Cycling home with

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a friend from the High School we were approaching the Stirling Road railway bridge when we heard and saw a large low flying aircraft pass over our heads. There was a huge explosion and pieces of debris clattered down from the sky. I rushed to pick up a piece of metal as a souvenir and dropped it immediately - it was red hot! The B24 had crashed on a laundry in Velyn Avenue and I believe killed several people.’

Another account, the writer remaining anonymous, recalls: ‘I was walking down Whyke Lane with Bernard Price when we heard a loud thud behind us and the sound of windows shattering. We went back up the lane and saw that the roof of a bungalow, ‘Babitone’, was destroyed: we could not go much further. Later I discovered that Bernard’s father was injured and later died, he had been working on his allotment. The next day we heard how one of my classmates, Donald Norman, had bravely entered the Laundry to help his mother escape the building’.

Frank Hellyer, who as a 16-year-old was working in the timber yard at the time of the crash has given me an account of his experiences that day. Frank retired from the company in 2009 after 65 years, serving for the last twenty as a Director.

When the crash occurred he was 50 yards away unloading a lorry, but was protected from the blast by three lime trees, two of which, although damaged at the time, are still there today. The staff was sent home to return

A picture taken of the crash site the following day (Courtesy Ivo De Jong)

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the next day. When they did, they were issued with rakes and told to scrape up all the bits of debris in the yard, which included many small pieces of metal and loose bullets. Both the Police and American officers who were on the site reminded them of the danger of these bullets and warned them against souvenir taking.

One engine of the plane had ended up in the wall of St John’s School, another ended up in a water tank in the field opposite in The Hornet, later Rowe’s Garage, now housing. Another had destroyed the roof of the carpentry shop in the yard, and the fourth was in the road, approximately where St John’s Ambulance HQ is today. A wheel had been blown over Long’s buildings into Hooker’s builders’ yard on the north side of the Hornet. According to the official incident report, the plane had carried five 1000lb bombs, two of which exploded, the remaining three being removed that evening by an RAF Bomb Disposal team.

Frank, however, differs on this point: he says that the bombs did not explode and he remembers seeing the bombs being removed from the site the next day. He makes the point that if two 1000lb bombs had exploded both he and most of the Hornet would have disappeared and that the explosion was caused by the aviation fuel igniting on impact. Certainly there was not the crater that one would expect had the bombs gone up.

I have since had confirmation from S/Sgt Monroe Wolyn, the front gunner on the plane that day, that there were only three bombs aboard at the time of the crash. He writes, ‘The B-24 had two forward and two aft bomb bays of equal dimensions. I distinctly remember one bomb in both forward bays and one bomb in the aft right bay. There was no bomb in the aft left bay. I remember this clearly because I tried to bale out from the forward right bay and when I got stuck there, I cussed myself for not going out the left aft bay because there was no bomb there, just a great big empty hole that I could have easily jumped through. At this point Hood came along to jump out and seeing me there asked if I were stuck. I said yes and he planted a foot on my chest and stood on me. I squirted out of there like a cork from a bottle.’ More from Monroe Wolyn later, but I am sure that his account is accurate; one would not forget such an experience. The explosion was caused by the high octane aircraft fuel aboard the plane, as Monroe continues: ‘If two 1000 pound high explosive bombs detonated simultaneously it would seem to me that more blast damage would have been noticeable. The airplane wreckage would have been in very small pieces indeed.’

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Dennis Barratt, another Central School classmate, lived in Cambrai Avenue; he usually came home past the crash site. That day however he had gone ‘the long way round’ via Whyke Road. He was in the Hornet when he heard the approaching plane: ‘We assumed it was another damaged aircraft, of which we had seen many, limping back to Tangmere. The enormous explosion and huge pall of smoke told us otherwise. We started running down towards it. There was always the chance of souvenirs that were tradable. We were stopped by ARP wardens because of “unexploded bombs”. At that time we had no idea of the damage, as everything was out of sight, apart from dust and smoke clouds…Then we were met by anxious parents who had run round from Winden, Ormonde, and Cambrai Avenues via Whyke Road, knowing that we always come home over the crash site area. We were aware that it was a Liberator as almost all of us had sets of silhouette aircraft collected from the back of packs of Sweet Caporal cigarettes that the Americans smoked in seemingly very large amounts. . . . The point of impact was on the site of the Roman Amphitheatre which had been dug over for use as wartime allotment gardens. The plane then slid into the rear of the laundry exploding at the same time. Gouged out furrows where it travelled could be seen in the ground for many months after’.

Three persons died as a result of the crash: a 14-year-old girl and a 58-year-old woman who were workers in the laundry and Bernard Price’s father who had been working in his allotment. Thirteen others were detained at the hospital and a further thirteen allowed home, others were treated at the First Aid Post set up on the site.

Tribute was paid in the Saturday issue of the Chichester Observer to the speed in which the Civil Defence and emergency services arrived on site, although the following week a correspondent complained that ambulances were thirty minutes in arriving after being called to casualties in Whyke Lane. Members of the Women’s Voluntary Service attended the scene and set up a reception centre in a nearby air raid shelter where those with minor injuries were treated

Alan Brown, who lived in nearby Ormonde Avenue, was a schoolboy at the time and recalls: ‘On the day of the crash, I had just passed through the laundry yard and had reached the top of Ormonde Avenue. I dived into the gutter as all sorts of bits and pieces fell around me. I remember there were fires everywhere. I ran home to find everything in a mess. The back door had been blown out through the front door, all windows were gone and ceilings

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The day after the crash and workmen were clearing the old blacksmith’s forge that had stood at the junction of Velyn Avenue and The Hornet for over a century. The site is now occupied by the St John’s Ambulance Brigade headquarters (Courtesy Frank Hellyer)

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were down. For three months we all lived in a big shelter at the top of the road, until the bomb damage people had repaired the houses.’

In the days that followed, the wreckage was loaded on to low loader vehicles for removal from site. An American Air Force construction team rebuilt the laundry using prefabricated components, and amazingly it was up and running again just eight weeks after the crash. Teams of workmen were drafted in to repair the many damaged houses in the area. Notwithstanding this, it was several months before some families returned to their homes.

The Squadron and its Mission

THE PLANEThe plane was a B-24 Liberator Bomber, No. 41-29481, of No. 839 Squadron, which was based at the US airfield at Lavenham, near Ipswich. The Consolidated B24 Liberator was a four-engine bomber with a wingspan of 110 feet; it had a crew of ten, a range of up to 3700 miles and a bomb load of 8,800 pounds. Over 18,000 were built, even more than the other famous Second World War US bomber, the B-17, Flying Fortress. The Liberator gained a distinguished war record, operating in the European, Pacific, North African and Middle Eastern theatres. One of its main virtues was a long operating range which led to it being used also for other duties, including maritime patrol, anti-submarine work,

Liberators at Lavenham awaiting take off (Courtesy Ivo de Jong)

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reconnaissance, cargo and personnel transport. Winston Churchill used one as his own transport aircraft.

THE MISSIONThe plane had set off from Lavenham airbase in Suffolk, one of dozens of airfields built in accordance with the American policy of having many small bases rather than the larger, more vulnerable, airfields such as Tangmere. It had been open for just a month before the crash.

On the day of the crash the official US 8th Air Force report states that a force of 164 B-24s bombed railway marshalling yards in Mulhouse, Central France, that another 24 went on to bomb yards at Chaumont and a further 66 attacked targets at Orleans. Later that day a force of 549 B-17 Flying Fortresses attacked railway sites in Belgium and Holland; a total of thirteen bombers were lost.

Thirty-six Liberators set out from Lavenham at 10.30 in the morning of May 11th, thirteen of them from 839 Squadron; one developed engine trouble on take-off and returned directly to base. The weather was fine and all went well. The Lavenham force met up with the other squadrons and passed over the French coast: RAF fighters, flying high above, escorted them. By 14.39 the planes were over Chateaudun, in Central France, about 30 miles South of Chartres, when they were met by German anti-aircraft fire. No. 41-29481 and one other, piloted by Lt. Vratny, were damaged and both decided to abort the mission and return to Britain.

Vratny’s plane lost altitude and he gave orders to the crew to bail out: it crashed at Nogent-le-Rotrou. Two of the crew were saved by the French Resistance and spent the rest of the war hidden in a farmhouse; the others were captured and taken prisoners of war. The German Luftwaffe archives claim that FW-190 fighters attacked the bomber force, although no such action was reported by the Americans. Archives do show however that two German ‘ace’ fighter pilots, Woldemar Radenar and Adolf Glunz, had to crash land their planes that day as the result of damage purportedly inflicted by B-24 gunners.

Meanwhile 41-29481 flew back over the Channel. The squadron incident report confirms that the plane ‘was damaged by flak and the crew nursed it back to Southern England where the condition of the plane deteriorated to the point that the crew had to bail out. The ship was set on a course for the Channel before parachuting, but it made a 180 degree turn and crashed in the town of Chichester’.

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FLIGHT PATH: 11 MAY 1944

Splashers were radio signal beacons; Control Points [CP] were flight monitoring points; the Initial Point [IP] marked the beginning of the bombing run (during which the plane pursued a path set by their Norden bombsights) and Rally Point [RP] was the re-assembly point for the Squadron after completing the bombing run. Courtesy National Archives, Washington DC, USA

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THE CREWThe crew’s usual plane was unusable that day (it needed an engine change), so they were assigned to Liberator 41-29481, borrowed from another squadron. The pilot was Lt. Joseph A. Duncan, aged 22 and he had a crew of nine; the second pilot was Lt. James Hood. The rest of the crew comprised 2nd Lt. Chester B Evans, navigator; Lt. Francis Miller, bombardier; Tech/Sgt Arnold Marquardt, engineer; Tech/Sgt Gerald Brown, radio operator; Sgt James Galligan, mid-gunner; S/Sgt Monroe Wolyn, nose gunner; Sgt Nolan Antee, waist gunner; and Sgt David Grieve, the tail-gunner who at 27 was the oldest man in the crew.

After setting the plane to ditch in the Channel, the crew landed in various locations on the Selsey Peninsula: Lt. Duncan came down at North Bersted and was taken to the Eastergate Field Hospital with a broken leg, and the bombardier, Lt Hood, who had a badly sprained ankle, to the Royal West Sussex Hospital in Chichester. The remaining crew were taken to the RAF air base at Merston, awaiting collection. Later that evening they made a visit to the crash site.

Lt Duncan, Lt Hood, S/Sgt Brown and S/Sgt Wolyn flew together again, this time in a B-17 Fortress on a raid on the Rechlin Experimental Airfield in Germany on 25 August 1944. Their plane was hit by flak and exploded. Lt Duncan and S/Sgt Wolyn were blown out but managed to parachute to safety. They were taken prisoner and were held in Stalag IV until the end of the war. Hood and Brown lost their lives in this action.

Monroe Wolyn later served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1952. Today, 2009, Lt Duncan and S/Sgt Wolyn are still good friends and often meet up. Sgt Marquardt lives with his wife in Missouri.

S/SGT WOLYN’S ACCOUNT Ivo de Jong is a noted military historian and a serving Colonel in the Royal Dutch Army. In his book, The History of the 487th Bomb Group, he has included an account of the events of May 11th by Monroe Wolyn, the nose gunner of 41-29481.

S/Sgt Wolyn recalls: ‘We were rousted out of bed around 03:30 as usual; we went to breakfast and then to briefing. Our plane was down with engine problems, cylinder changes and one complete engine change and was unusable that day. We were assigned an airplane from another squadron.

Briefing was unremarkable except for the fact that we were to bomb from 12,000 feet rather than twice that height. We were to bomb from this

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altitude in order to obtain better results. This blunder was to cost us dear. There was just a bit of grumbling about the assigned altitude being too low to avoid flak, but it was smoothed over by the fact that we did not have to wear heated (space) suits or the heavy fur-lined clothing. We could fly in our light leather jackets that most WWII air force movies display so prominently.

The trip to the French coast was quite pleasant and normal, the weather was good, the skies clear and full of allied aircraft. Some of the interphone chatter referred to the abundance of B-25 and B-26 bombers operating at that altitude and seemingly on their way to the same place in France that we were heading for. High above us were fighters from the RAF, probably Spitfires and a load of P-38s just doodling around. Everyone was waiting for the Luftwaffe to come play, but they stayed home. We saw no German aircraft.

After a time, over France our formation turned left, east, and headed for our target. It seems as though this was where the first goof occurred. We drew some flak from a battery that was not supposed to be there; we were off course and we were not supposed to be there. They drew blood, shooting down one B-24. I somehow think that was Col. Lay, Group Commander, but I am not sure about that. We flew on toward our target, still off course and ran into more flak, quite heavy now near a place called Chateaudun. I

watched a B-24 from the 836 Squadron take a hit in No.2 engine: it started burning quickly, dropped out of formation, exploded and the remains fell to the ground. I saw no chutes. I knew some of the crew as friends.

Large calibre flak was everywhere; tracers were coming up like upside down waterfalls. More airplanes dropped out of formation. We flew on with the airplane seeming to take hit after hit from shrapnel coming out of a hopper. A chunk of shrapnel hit my turret and broke the plexiglass, but it remained intact. Finally the words “Bombs Away” came through the interphone, but I did not feel the airplane ‘lift’ as it usually does when a few tons of bombs are released. Instead Lt Duncan put the nose down to pick up some speed; we made our usual turn away from the flak in order to get the hell out of there and were soon in some nice quiet and undisturbed piece of

S/Sgt Wolyn - by himself

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sky, seemingly nice and safe and on our way home. I heard our bombardier call Lt Duncan and inform him that we still

had our bombs aboard. They did not release. The bombs failed to drop in normal mode, manual mode or in emergency mode. We could not get rid of them. Lt Duncan then called each gunner in turn and asked for a report on battle damage to the airplane. The reports were all good until the top turret

gunner reported a hole in the wing over No.3 engine supercharger. Lt Duncan asked how big the hole was and the reply was, “About big enough to drop a sheep through”. My heart sank. I thought we had had it. No.3 engine though was running normally, no problem there and that made me feel better. But now we had to leave the formation. We could not keep up because of the weight of the bombs, three 1,000

pounders. There was some question as to the probability of our running out of fuel before we could cross the Channel to safety. So we put the nose of our B-24 down a bit and made a beeline for home.

About halfway across the Channel, I decided to go back to the waist of the airplane to use the relief tube. In order to do so I had to pass through the bomb bay. It was a mess. There were holes all over. It looked like a sieve. Small holes, big holes, round holes, jagged holes. Wire bundles were torn apart; control cables were flapping around and led nowhere. The bombs were hanging serenely in their racks, safety cables were still in place, no danger there. Hydraulic fluid was all over, making things slippery. It was a mess. Soon after using the relief tube, one of the waist gunners told me to get back to my turret: Ju-88s were in the area, so back I went. The 88s never showed up and we could see the white cliffs.

We thought we had it made, but then Number three engine suddenly erupted into flame; I had a good view of that. Feathering the engine and pulling the extinguisher handle soon put the fire out and we went to the

This picture shows the front nose turret of a Liberator, as occupied by Sgt Wolyn. The lower window was used for aiming by the bombardier (Courtesy Monroe Wolwyn)

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three-engine procedure but then a fire erupted near the command deck just behind the cockpit. It was electrical in nature and was in a very inaccessible place. The navigator tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Grab your chute and go back to the waist”. I did start in that direction only to be stopped by our engineer trying to put out the electrical fire. I could see it burning in the false wall between the cockpit and the command deck. He was shouting to Lt Duncan that he had used our last extinguisher and it was still burning. At that time No.3 engine started burning again. I told him I could pee on that fire and put it out, but he just laughed and told me, “Lt Duncan says to bail out”.

The airplane was getting very smoky, so I opened the bomb bay doors a bit to suck out the smoke and just then we crossed the English coast I could see the ground clearly. We were down to about 5,000 feet at that time; I think Lt Duncan initiated the bailout procedure, which was a series of very loud alarm bells. Groups of ring, ring, ring meant, prepare to bail out, a continuous ring meant bail out. The four men in the rear of the airplane were informed by interphone and the alarm bells to bail out, but when the time came they were standing around the open escape hatch waiting for the final word. When it came, they were all four frozen in place. Each looked at another and said, “You go first!”, “You go first!” and so on. Then the first body, jumping from the front of the plane, sped by their escape hatch and they all tried to get out at once.

They all made it OK. Bombardier, navigator and flight engineer all went out of the bomb bay and I decided it was my turn, but got my chute harness tangled up on a bomb. I was stuck, but felt that I could get back up and try again when Lt Hood appeared, looked at me and asked, “Are you stuck?” I nodded, he put a foot on my chest, and stepped down and out I went. I fell through the air with the greatest of ease in the supine position and then became fascinated at the sight of that airplane. It was flying along straight and level and seemed to be burning all over. No.3 engine had a trail of fire that went far beyond the tail. Fire also seemed to be coming from the waist section and bomb bay.

I kept looking until I realized that I should open my chute. I pulled the rip cord and out it came, beautiful! Just about then the last of the crew came hurtling from the plane: it was Lt Duncan. I swivelled around in my harness and counted the chutes. There were ten including my own, all open nicely and under control. I looked at the airplane. Lt Duncan had turned it 180

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degrees and set it on autopilot so it would fly out to sea and crash there. But as I watched it started to turn right and lose some height. No.3 engine was burning very brightly now.

The trail of fire was at least thirty feet behind the airplane. I thought it was going to make a circle and come around and crash into one of us hanging in our chute harness. No.4 engine was running well when we jumped, but the fire must have interfered with its fuel supply and when it (No.4) lost power the airplane was unable to maintain straight and level flight. So the plane turned into the dead engines and lost height. It was coming in our general direction when it sort of slipped laterally toward the ground and spun into a fiery death plunge.

It crashed into some buildings, the bombs exploded. It was a mess. When we hit the ground, we all managed to remember our training, rolled with the wind, deflated our chutes and were fine. I had a British soldier find me shortly after I touched down. He came running toward me and shouted for me to remain still until he was satisfied that I was not injured. Then he asked for a piece of my chute so that he could make a scarf ‘for his sweetie’. I gave him the whole thing. Lt Duncan managed to break a leg and Lt Hood had a badly sprained ankle. Six people on the ground were killed when the airplane hit that building. I have never really gotten over that. What a shame. I understand that to this day people living there refer to that airplane as the Chichester Bomber.’

Fortunately the loss of life was not as great as S/Sgt Wolyn had feared.In S/Sgt Wolyn’s account he mentions the loss of Colonel Lay’s plane. Lt.Col Beirne Lay Jr. was the commanding officer of the 487th Bomb Group; he had brought the group to Lavenham in April and this was its fourth mission. When the force encountered heavy flak near Chateaudun, both Lay’s B-24 and that of his deputy commander were shot down. Lay parachuted from his aircraft near Coulonges-les-Sablous and was hidden by members of the French Resistance. Following D-Day Lay managed to join up with the Allied advance units. Returning to civilian life, Beirne Lay Jr. distinguished himself as screenwriter by creating the scenarios that gave rise to some of the best aviation films dealing with World War II including 12 O’Clock High (1949), Above and Beyond (1952), Strategic Air Command (1955) and Toward the Unknown (1956).

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Letter home from Lt. Joe Duncan to his parents.Britt Duncan has allowed me to print this letter that his father (photograph adjacent) sent home after the incident; some of the content has been deleted by the Censor.

Dad,I’m writing this on a separate

letter for two reasons. 1/ so if the censor thinks it shouldn’t go through he can destroy the whole thing and

say nothing about it 2/ I would rather Mother didn’t see it, might make her worry more.

It all happened several days ago. We went out over the Continent on a little show and as usual Jerry threw a little scrap iron at us, only this time my wagon caught quite a bit of it, however she kept plugging until we reached the English coast before she started giving up.

Then I heard an explosion in or near our No.3 engine [we think it was an unexploded 20mm shell that had lodged and waited until then to go off]

As soon as it exploded No.3 caught fire and went dead instantly. I told my crew to prepare to bail out and I picked out a field in case a forced landing became necessary, but intending to go on home if the fire went out. It didn’t. A few seconds later my engineer reported the fire had spread to the bomb bay and to the back of the plane, also No.4 engine went out about that time, so I told the crew to bail out.

Two of my boys had been fighting the fire with a hand extinguisher; they very neatly laid the extinguisher back in the radio compartment and left. The others were already leaving. A few seconds and they were all

Courtesy Britt Duncan

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gone, I called to make sure and at the same time I had been turning to get the ‘ole wagon back to the Channel, only a little more and her nose was headed to sea so I decided it was time for me to go and did.

A few seconds later the old girl exploded with a hell of a bang. Her tanks had exploded. It made me sick to see it ‘cause as soon as I left her she turned right back and exploded right over a little town. Though the biggest pieces left after exploding were the engines she did a lot of damage.

I had bailed out quite a bit lower that the rest of my crew so I looked up and counted the chutes to see if they were all there, they were and they all landed OK except my bombardier. He sustained a broken ankle; I also have a slight fracture to my right ankle. I have to wear a plaster cast which is awful clumsy. I tried to fly yesterday but it’s so awkward I guess it will be a month or so before I can go to work again. I could fly the plane OK but I couldn’t hold it with two engines out on one side as it takes an awful lot of pressure on the rudder. I ‘me going to get a new plaster cast tomorrow and try it again though. I hope it will work better but if it doesn’t I won’t take any chances, I’ll wait until I‘me sure I can handle the plane before I fly any more missions.

Joe Duncan, now Colonel, and a B-54, on 22 March 2010 (Courtesy Britt Duncan)

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The Casualties

As mentioned earlier, three lives were lost in the incident: fourteen-year old May Grainger, who lived at No.1 Bramber Road and whose mother worked as canteen manageress in Kenneth Long’s premises adjoining the site, died instantly. Her father was away, a soldier serving with the Royal Sussex Regiment in North Africa. Her funeral, held in St Pancras Church the following Tuesday, was attended by over 60 persons including staff from the Lancastrian Girls School that she had left only a few months before.

Mrs Elizabeth Tees, aged 58, who died of her injuries in hospital, on the Sunday after the event, was a widow who lived at No.23, St. James’ Road. I have heard from several sources that, defying instructions, she ran back into the burning building to retrieve her handbag. One of the Laundry’s original employees, she had three sons, two serving in the RAF (one a POW, the other in the Middle East), and another who was in the Air Training Corps. Her funeral took place at Portfield Church on the Wednesday after the crash and was attended by many of her colleagues. One son, Freddie Tees, front gunner in one of the Lancaster bombers of RAF 617 Squadron, was shot down in the famous Dambusters raid in May 1943. He was the only survivor of his crew, and when he died in 1989, at his request his ashes were interred alongside the graves of his colleagues. He only learnt of his mother’s death on his release from POW camp in 1945.

The other fatality was that of Leonard Price, father of Bernard Price, the Chichester author and television personality. Bernard later wrote the following account of his father and the events of May 11:

‘When war came my father took up the national summons to ‘Dig for Victory’. He was a gardener of great devotion and talent. Once a professional soldier, he had served in India and was present at the great Durbar at Delhi in 1912. In the First World War he fought in France where he was wounded and gassed. As well as intensely cultivating his garden, he took allotments whenever they were available. One of them was in the centre of Chichester’s second-century Roman amphitheatre. I knew the place well, before the war I had been taken to a circus there and remembered the thrill of seeing my first lions.

One Thursday afternoon in May 1944 our lives were changed. I was walking home from school and had just waved to my father and he to me

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as he dug and planted at the amphitheatre. A few paces more and I saw parachutes descending south of the city, by no means an uncommon sight in those days. Suddenly, a huge aircraft swooped low overhead, crashed and exploded. A colossal eruption of oil black smoke towered and swelled into the sky and reddened with the fires beneath. I ran home. The aircraft, an American Liberator bomber, had crashed in the middle of the amphitheatre. My father, terribly injured and burnt, survived for three months.’

In addition to the fatalities, two schoolboys were severely injured. Ray Gardner and Gordon Goff had been making their way home when they were caught in the fireball that followed the crash. Gordon, who lived in Victoria Road, was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead, badly burnt by aviation fuel, to hair, hands and knees. A piece of shrapnel had penetrated into his liver, and he required plastic surgery from Sir Archibald McIndoe. He spent the next year going between the Victoria and the Children’s Ward in the Royal West Sussex Hospital.

Outcome of Intended Mission

The local Chaumont newspaper has published extracts from the diary of one of the town’s residents. Here are the translated comments that he made that day: Thursday, May 11, 1944. 16.15

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A later raid on May 24th did manage to destroy the station and railway yards.

Another item, from the Chaumont News, February 2008

Lavenham Airbase

Lavenham airfield was built during 1943. The technical site and administrative buildings were on the southern side of the airfield as were most of the dispersed temporary buildings which gave accommodation for 2,900 personnel.

The airfield was opened in April 1944 and was used by the United States Army Air Force Eighth Air Force. Lavenham was given USAAF designation Station 137 (LV). The 487th Bombardment Group (Heavy) arrived from Alamogordo AAF

New Mexico on 5 April 1944 and was assigned to

the 4th Combat Bombardment Wing; the group tail code was a “Square-P”. Its operational squadrons were: the 836th, 837th, 838th and 839th Bomb Squadrons.

A Liberator from the squadron is seen here landing at Lavenham (Courtesy Ivo de Jong)

(Courtesy Chaumont News)

20 21

The group flew both the B-24 Liberator and the B-17 Flying Fortress as part of the Eighth Air Force’s strategic bombing campaign and began combat in May 1944, bombing airfields in France in preparation for the invasion of Normandy; then pounding coastal defences, road junctions, bridges and locomotives during the invasion. No. 839, bombardment Squadron flew 185 missions from Lavenham before it closed in August 1945. In that time 48 of its planes failed to return.

Post-war the airfield remained on ‘care and maintenance’ until 1958 when it was returned to agricultural use. There is a memorial in the Market Square to those airmen from the base who failed to return. In the Swan Hotel there are many wartime mementos including signatures of group members dating back to 1943, and from reunions in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. The former control tower has been restored by the local Lavenham residents, although the other buildings and runways have been removed.

The memorial to the men of the 487th Bomber Group in the Market Square at Lavenham (Courtesy Lavenham Community Council)

The Site Since the Crash

In 1985 Monroe Wolwyn, the nose gunner of the Liberator, returned to Chichester to inspect the site of the crash.

Monroe Wolwyn viewing the repaired

wall to St John’s (now Eastgate)

House where it had been punctured by

an aero engine.(Courtesy Monroe Wolwyn)

Map of crash site (O.S. SU867046) and historic surrounding features, including many allotments run by the then City Council. (The map reference on the

Police Report – see frontispiece – uses a Cassini Grid reference)

X

The photograph below, taken from the West, shows the approximate point of impact. The development now on the site is called Peter Weston Place, named after the twice Mayor of Chichester, who coincidentally, as a 12-year-old boy at the time of the crash, lived in an adjacent bungalow.

The crash site today (2009) (Courtesy Ken Green)

AcknowledgementsThe overriding reaction emerging from preparing this account of the events of 11 May 1944 is an appreciation of the bravery of the American aircrews involved and I wish to dedicate this publication to all the many US airmen who came to our country and exhibited amazing courage in risking their lives for freedom. In particular, I wish to acknowledge help from Monroe Wolwyn, Britt Duncan and Ivo de Jong.

The wall today (2010) punctured by the aero engine: note the original Flemish bond bounded at the bottom (sixth course) by a row of headers being completed to the right – the area of the damage – by poor quality brick marked with efflorescence(Courtesy Paul Foster)

ADVISORY EDITORIAL GROUP

The New Chichester Papers are edited by an Advisory Editorial Group; membership of the group is drawn from organizations with an interest in the history of Chichester.

EDITOR

Paul Foster - Emeritus Professor, University of Chichester<p.foster@chi.ac.uk>

MEMBERS

Danae Tankard (Dr) – Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, and University of Chichester

Ken Green – Founder of Chichester Local History Society

Alan Green – Chichester Local History Society

Simon Kitchin – Chichester District Museum

Rodney Duggua – Town Clerk, City of Chichester

Richard Childs – County Archivist, West Sussex

The Advisory Editorial Group invites proposals for future publications. It is planned to work to a time-scale of publishing one paper a year, and potential writers are asked to discuss their idea with any member of the Group. Papers of the order of 6,000-12,000 words in length are deemed possible for publication; they should be submitted electronically, and writers with material that includes many illustrations are asked to be economic with textual content. Except in special circumstances, all illustrations (other than the cover) will be printed in black and white. Writers with material accepted for publication will retain copyright in their text, and will receive on publication three complimentary copies of their paper. No royalties will be paid.

Published September 2010

by

Chichester Local History Societyin association with the

University of Chichester

ISBN 978-0-948765-97-1

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data available

© Ken Green

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the University of Chichester. Exceptions to the above are allowed in respect of fair dealing for the purposes of research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs, and Patent Act 1988.

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Printed by Bexley Printers www.bexleyprinters.co.uk

CHICHESTER LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY

The Society, founded in 1984, meets on thesecond Wednesday of each month (except for

July and August). Meetings are generally held atNew Park Community Centre, New Park Road,Chichester, to hear lectures on subjects of interest

to Chichester residents and historians.

New members and visitors are always welcome.

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