Lancaster memorial, Gonalston,Notts. Then and Now.

[kebecker]

This crew of a Lancaster from 5 LFS at Syerston lay in the CWGC section of Newark Cemetery 26 MAy 1944. Four RAF and 3 RCAF crew, does anyone know where they crashed?


http://i336.photobucket.com/albums/n330/kebecker2/IMG_0266-1.jpg

[dangerousdave]

Sorry no idea. However the Newark cemetary is well worth a visit just to see the Polish War section. There are over 4oo immaculate kept graves there as well as the old grave of General Sikorski (who was repatriated to Poland a few years ago).

[kebecker]

Agreed well worth a visit, a moving experience and a timely reminder that many from all over the world paid the ultimate sacrifice.

http://i336.photobucket.com/albums/n330/kebecker2/IMG_0271-1.jpg

[Ossington_2008]

Is this the Sanderson crew? Middlemas, Clark, Noble, Broe, Wright and Nicholls? I was told years ago of a memorial by Glebe Farm Gonalston (about 2-3 miles West of Syerston on the opposite side of the Trent) but I've yet to find it.
Lancaster I, L7578, coded RC-L, ex-97 sqn, 207 CF, 83 CF, 1664 & 1668 CUs.
It's on my try-again list as I promised to cover all Notts memorials at an ARG AGM a few years ago. I even took an aerial photo of the village way back to aid my door-knocking but have lost it since. I have listed some 600+ Notts air crashes from 1913 to present but exact locations/circumstances are v difficult to pin down. Roll on the lottery win.

[kebecker]

Yes that is the crew, I think the the Canadians are from out West, but I will have a dig around to see if they are listed on any of the war memorials out here, Veterans Affairs keep a fairly good listing, there are also a couple of virtual Memorials with a .ca address that I will try.

[REF]

Ossington_2008

Any chance you have your memorial list to hand? We have the early stages of a memorial audit forum in which we hope to list all memorials with NRG's, its in the members only forum. As you can see there is still alot to do but hopefully there will be a few helpers with it!

[kebecker]

Ossie

According to the listing I have in front of me L7578 crashed at Mooton Park Estates Gonalstondose this narrow down where the memorial might be?

[CDP]

Ikebecker - I take it Mooton Park Estates is the name of a Company and not an area?

Chris

[kebecker]

Chris

I think both terms are correct. I think the term Estates refers to a land owner/farmer as in for example the Chatsworth Estate. I took the reference from They shall Grow Not Old. This was assembled using (as far as I know) contempory war time records.

[CDP]

Cheers kebecker. I ask because a quick look at the OS map reveals a Park just to the n/e and wondered whether this might be Mooton Park. No name is given on the 1:50 thou' Landranger sheet (just "The Park") and Google hasn't thrown anything up.

Chris

[kebecker]

I suspect you would need to go to an older series and possibly a larger scale. There is also the possibility that the entry I used has a transciption error and Mooton is incorrect.

[Ossington_2008]

Here we go. first of all, a map:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/Ossington_2008/MapGlebeFarm.jpg
X marks the spot.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/Ossington_2008/IMG_3036.jpg
SK679748090 should get you there. If you GE & zoom in to the hedge line, the two posts will be visible.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/Ossington_2008/IMG_3038.jpg
Memorial to the extreme right in this shot. Alan Yates of Glebe Farm stands on the impact zone. Oak tree in background still shows evidence of damage.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/Ossington_2008/IMG_3041.jpg
Any fragments that make it to the surface get piled up next to the memorial.
BTW, no-one locally knows anything about a "Mooton Park" it certainly is not a location nearby. I suspect it is a misreading for Hooton Park airfield, though what connection could there be between Merseyside and this crash?

[kebecker]

top man! I'll stand you a pint

[Ossington_2008]

Sorry about this Mr Moderator, but I forgot to load up a pic of the memorial face when I did the others. Here it is:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/Ossington_2008/IMG_3035.jpg

[dangerousdave]

Shame it is dirty and unkempt. Maybe it needs a clean up.

[airfields man]

I photographed this memorial thats just outside the villade of Gonalstone ten years ago. Again january this year. Iv'e also got a copy of the 1996 Re-dedication after it's first clean-up. Courtesy of the Air Mail Magazine. Airfieldsman. PS. It's a very interesting photograph as the hedge is further back ??.....Or has the memorial been moved forward ???

[EGDGZTCW]

I was talking to my Mum today, who, as a little girl sitting on the end of her bed, used to watch the Lancasters flying over her village (Lambley in Notts). She would watch hundreds of them, gathering for the evenings bombing raids. One evening she watched in horror as one crashed and asked me if I could find out some details for her. She said it went down just north of Gonalston (west of Syerston and NE Lambley village). As a curious little girl, she even cycled with her friend to see if they could find any sign of the crashsite, although this was some time afterwards apparently. She found the field in which it crashed but doesn't remember seeing anything significant. Persumably the RAF had cleared up by the time she found the site, some weeks (she thinks) later.

I looked up the crash on 'tinterweb' and came up with reg L7578 (seems this airframe was previousley J Nettletons Lanc. Did I read that right ?) A further search via Google and I find a link to this thread on our very own AIX !

Although she can't remember the exact details, she was clearly effected deeply by the experience of that evening in 1944 sitting on the end of her bed and carries the memory to this day. I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like. I'm still searching for the cause of the crash, any ideas? Was it on a training sortie? (not sure what LFS means!)

I will show her the entries herein next time she's over at our place. Thanks everyone.

Chris

PS. Mum has never heard of Mooton Park. If it was there she'd know it. Must be a mistake......

[PNK]

I think LFS is Lancaster Finishing School.

My mums wartime sweetheart was bomber aircrew, I think Lancasters. He was killed when the aircraft was shot down over Germany. Recently (last 5 years!) she saw a programme about Bomber Command and they went into some detail on the likely fate of crews in a stricken aircraft. Apparently she was in tears for quite a while. I must research his fate but she can't remember his surname.

[EGDGZTCW]

Lancaster Finishing School........thanks PNK. Persumably from Syerston?

[airfields man]

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e82/airfieldsman/window0006-28.jpg
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e82/airfieldsman/window0009-20.jpg
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e82/airfieldsman/window0010-17.jpg
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e82/airfieldsman/window0012-16.jpg

I first called here in 1997. Took some photographs, Can't find them. Took these in 2007. The copy from the Air Mail Magazine is from October-december 1996 edition. Under the heading Bill Berry's Diary.

[airfields man]

See paper cutting

[EGDGZTCW]

My Mum, as a litle girl, saw this aircraft crash from her bedroom window. Does anybody know what went wrong. Was it engine failure? I've searched the Internet for details of the cause but nothing found. Should I start a seperate/new thread?

[kebecker]

There is nothing in my records apart from the probably eroneous reference to Mooton Park Estates and the names of the Canadian crew members

[dangerousdave]

I may have details on this. Bear with me.

[EGDGZTCW]

There is nothing in my records apart from the probably eroneous reference to Mooton Park Estates and the names of the Canadian crew members

Thanks for that. I have asked my Mum about Mooton Park, and she in turn has spoken to her brother, who still lives near by in the village of Lambley (WSW of Gonalston), neither have ever heard of such a place or an estate so named.


I may have details on this. Bear with me.

Thank you. I have shown Mum all the posts on the 5LFS thread

[Mike]

http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/mikermurray/L7578.jpg

Apparantly this was the plane that John Nettleton and crew practised for the Ausburg raid in although they flew R5508 on the raid itself. It served with 44, 97, 83 Sqns, 1654, 1668 HCUs before its final posting to 5LFS.

Has anyone got, or thought about getting, the Accident Record Card from the RAFM? It should give more details.

http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/coll ... ecords.cfm (http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/collections/archive/aircraft_records.cfm)

[EGDGZTCW]

Hi Mike. You wouldn't believe it but I found that very photo in a recent edition of Flypast just the other day. It went unoticed at first. I recognised KM*B as J Nettletons and thought L7578 was. Even Corgi list one of there early Lanc models as L7578 KM*B, I thought I'll buy it for her. Great, a model of the very aircraft she saw that night. Further investigation revealled that L7578 was a stand in for this photo as R5508 was being repaired post Op and even Corgi had got it wrong. Never the less, she got to see a pic of the very Lancaster, she couldn't believe it, made her cry...again!

[dangerousdave]

Is this the same plane that crashed at Hoveringham about a mile away? I know that sounds strange but one crashed there and they have just found some parts of it and were on about having a ceremony but I didnt know if perhaps the parts they found fell off prior to impact or were a result of being blasted on impact

[Ossington_2008]

Hoveringham collected two Lancasters, JB125 of 5 LFS on 12/01/45 & LM308 also of 5 LFS on 29/1/45. The former came down 1/2 m N of the Elm Tree Hotel on land now on or very close to gravel excavations, the other somewhere near Hoveringham Hall as far as I can tell at the moment.

[Miley]

Having spoken to my good friend Pete Mephan ( his name and adress is in the cutting, is there any chance of trimmimg it off? ) his view was that it was a dual control training aircraft and the crewmember climbing into the navigators position caught his parachute straps around the spare rudder pedals. Pete worked on Lancasters during the war and was even present when they unceremoniously scrapped Guy Gibsons dams raid Lancaster. 'would be a rich man if I'd bought it' he tells me.

[EGDGZTCW]

Miley, thanks for posting!

Thats very interesting. I wonder if there is any way of confirming it. I have just passed this info to Mum but she is sure she saw the aircraft trailing smoke across the sky before the impact. Not sure how that fits in?
----------
Does anybody know how/where I can get hold of a copy of the photo of L7578 in Mike's post?? Mum has just asked me if I could get her one somehow. Should I approach Flypast as they had published it some months ago, would they be able to help do you think?

[Ossington_2008]

This is another photo of the machine concerned. In my case via The Avro Lancaster, Francis K Mason, Aston Publications 1989 (my word! that long ago!) page 66.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/Ossington_2008/L7578RC-L.jpg
One of a series of several exposures taken on the same flight, they have been repeated in many Lancaster publications since. I include the caption in full as it quotes the RAFM reference.
By the time of its loss, 26/5/44, it was coded RC-L (in red) and would have had the taboo track fairing added to the mid-upper turret.
Apparently aged BIs were preferred at the LFSs to younger BIIIs because their original Merlins could run at the continual higher output needed for prolonged circuits and bumps without overheating than the Packards fitted to later aircraft. I didn't think relatively minor changes to suit American production methods would make much difference, but apparently they did.
I haven't seen the record card for this machine- I will make that trip to DoRIS one day, but most quote a precis of "cause obscure." I don't think we shall ever know, despite, by all accounts, a lot of wreckage still claimed to be below ground. It took off at 1850 and crashed at 2215. What would cause a non-recoverable dive from 8000ft?

[EGDGZTCW]

Ossington.

Many thanks for the above, particularly the Neg Ref No, perhaps I could purchase a copy from the RAFM Hendon?

Where did you find out the times from? As for the reason for the "dive from 8000ft"..... well, I guess Mileys explanation above is as good as any. All I would ask is....since they all perished, how would anybody know that? Was there an investigation? Did the RAF spend time carrying out in depth crash investigations during wartime?

[Ossington_2008]

Times were taken from page 178 of RAF Bomber Command Losses Vol 8 Heavy Conversion Units and Miscellaneous Units, 1939-1947 by WR Chorley.
The RAFM should be able to provide you with a photocopy of F1180s. These are now held on microfiche and are themselves "copies in triplicate" originals are 7.5x5 inches. The rear face holds details of pilot (name, number, hours flown day/night etc)
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/Ossington_2008/FACL5427.jpg
This particular example is of the Battle that crashed near Oxton, (so perhaps it should be moved across after a few days-please mods)
Courts of Enquiry were held, inconclusive and rushed some of them might be. Nottinghamshire hosted at least 15 accidents that resulted in write-offs (most include fatalities) during May 1944 alone, AND there was a war on.

[airfields man]

The small container alongside the memorial holds bits and pieces that the ploughman has turned-up over the years.