" BEFORE WE GO "

WELLINGTON MEMORIAL

Rob Evans.

At about 10.50 pm on May l4th 1943, Wellington Mk.III, serial X3785, took off from 27 Operational Training Unit, Lichfield, for a night cross-country navigation exercise.

The flight was to be from Lichfield to Rhyl, Isle of Man, Anglesey, Fishguard, Llangollen, Cannock Chase bombing range and return to Lichfield, one of the unit's standard training routes.

Of the crew of six, the pilot was Flying Officer John William Robb of Glasgow, who had flown over three hundred hours, with twenty- nine on Wellingtons, ten of which were at night. The observer was Flying Officer Trevor Arthur Ley from Australia, who had completed over thirty operations in North Africa, flying with 108 Squadron from Kabrit. A screened instructor, he had been at 27 0TU for only two months. The pupil navigator was Pilot Officer George Herbert 'Billy' Cone of Bredfield, Suffolk. Sergeant Arthur William Sayers from Kent was the air bomber. The wireless operator/air gunner was Sergeant Gordon Stone Lee from Weston-Super-Mare and Sergeant Ernest Leslie Clarke of Nottingham, air gunner.

About 3 1/2 hours into the flight, on the Fishguard to Llangollen leg, an engine caught fire. The wireless operator tried to transmit a signal to Lichfield, but seconds later the Wellington hit a small hill near Lake Vyrnwy and exploded, killing all on board.

Just before the crash, the aircraft was heard to be in trouble by local people, with one engine misfiring before bursting into flames. The Wellington dived steeply into the ground at 2.35am on May 15th.

Some men of the local Home Guard were the first at the scene and were horrified by the destruction around them. All that could be done was to remove the bodies and the personal belongings that lay scattered on the ground. None of the crew appeared to be wearing parachutes. It seemed likely that they had been unable to reach them in time to bail out. On the other hand, Flying Officer Robb may have been trying to ditch the stricken aircraft, as the crash site is only 250 yards from the lake.

Just before crashing, the Wellington narrowly missed a farmhouse still occupied by a man who was a six-year-old boy at the time. He recalls that his mother, on hearing a low-flying aircraft, followed by an explosion, had thought that the Germans were trying to bomb the dam on the south side of the lake. She rushed outside to remove the white bedsheets from the washing line, thinking that enemy airmen may have taken them to be some kind of signal from the ground. Mr.Evans also recalled that his mother had said that after the Wellington's engines and guns had been taken away, most of the wreckage was left for many years.                         

All that remains on the wooded hillside are small pieces of wreckage at the Wellington's impact crater, which can now easily be passed unseen.

On August l8th this year, the aircraft and crew were remembered when around seventy guests were welcomed at the "Tavern Inn" near the lake to receive a picture entitled "Before We Go", representing the crew of X3785 studying their charts before take-off.

Attending the presentation were relatives and friends of the crew, Chris Pointon of the RAF Lichfield Association, cadets of the Welshpool Air Training Corps and local people who could remember, or knew of, the crash. The sounding of the Last Post was followed by a minute's silence and an address by the Reverend Dick Jones.

To complete the dedication, a Royal Air Force Tornado flew over the lake, dipping its wings at the spot where X3785 had fallen.

Chris Pointon explained that there were 250 training accidents involving aircraft of 27 OTU, mostly Wellingtons, but few had been commemorated, making the Lake Vyrnwy memorial very important.

The memorial picture now hangs in the hotel overlooking the lake, where visitors can enjoy the view and spare a thought for the six young airmen who lost their lives nearby.

By sad coincidence, the older brother of Arthur Sayers, Sergeant Albert Laurie Sayers, an air gunner with 207 Squadron, Spilsby, was lost when Lancaster LM 2l8, coded EM-N, was shot down during an attack on the Vl handling and storage facility at St. Leu d' Esserent on the night of 7/8 July, 1944.

The Lancaster, flown by Pilot Officer Kenneth Boyce , crashed two kilometres south-west of Aumale. Two of the crew, Flight Sergeant Alan Nichol and Sergeant John Parkinson, managed to evade capture with the help of French people. The other five crew members were killed. After five days, the Germans allowed a local man to remove the bodies for burial in Haudricourt Communal Cemetery.

Alan Nichol has since died. John Parkinson was present when a memorial to the crew was unvieled on July 10th l999, close to where his aircraft fell.

Of the thousands of airmen killed during World War Two, the two brothers are remembered in memorials hundreds of miles apart, but joined by fond memories over sixty years later.