The 'Introduce yourself' Thread

Thank you all for the welcoming messages

I am currently only interested in one specific crash. For the last 18 month, a Friend and I have been doing research about the crash of a B-24 in Burghill just outside Hereford, in which 10 American Airmen lost their lives.
We have campaigned for a plaque to be placed in the churchyard in Burghill to remember the airmen. The plaque will be unveiled as part of the Remembrance Sunday service on the 13th of November 2011.

We are also doing a presentation evening on the 19th of September (7pm in the Village hall in Burghill) to present the research and raise fund for the plaque

Jerome

Hi JeromeC, Welcome to the forum. Very interested in your campaign for a memorial too the crew of the B24 crash victims at Burghill church. Which Bomb Group was this B24 from? Looking forward to seeing some photographs of this dedication.

Jerome, is there any chance you could put some info on the crash and proposed memorial in the memorials section of the forum and update us with the progress. Great to hear a plaque is to be dedicated too.

airfields wrote:

Hi JeromeC, Welcome to the forum. Very interested in your campaign for a memorial too the crew of the B24 crash victims at Burghill church. Which Bomb Group was this B24 from? Looking forward to seeing some photographs of this dedication.

Hi Paul, B-24H 42-295238 apparently assigned to 406th BS Cheddington for leaflet drops, previously with 486th BG.

www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=...KMFoxZq0HnSgggnBSWow

Good to see that you plan a memorial to coincide with remembrance day. If you are looking for constructive advice with reference to fundraising, then I may be able to help.

After school enlisted in the Air Force as an Air Defence Operator for 3 years and spent many hours staring at a Radar screen. Ruins your eyesight. On leaving the Air Force joined Air Traffic Control and was based in the Control Tower at Prestwick Airport. Duties included filling flight progress strips,keeping records of Take Off and Landings,going out in Control truck and doing Runway Visual Range checks when visibility was bad,helping with runway lighting checks and reporting any lights U/S, and going off the airfield to do Approach Lighting checks again noting and reporting lights U/S. Apart from Civil movements with lots of Brittanias,B707's, DC8's,Constellations etc there was a lot of military activity since there was a United States Air Force base on the north side of the airfield and the 67th Air Rescue Squadron USAF was based there with HU16 and C54 Rescuemasters. The HU16's practised water landings in the Clyde. In addition there was a huge amount of USAF traffic staging through between USA and France/Germany. So there were C118,C124,C123,C133,C97,C135,WV2 Super Connies,Pregnant Connies ie US Navy Connies with big radomes top and bottom of fuselage. F84's coming from Europe back to USA and then F102's going USA to Europe. RCAF CF100's and Sabres coming from France to be broken up at Scottish Aviation Ltd some very much on their last legs. One landed with fuel streaming out of it and had to be towed of the runway. RCAF CF104's came in for deep maintenance at SAL and needed an Arrestor Barrier raised. These made a very impressive take off screaming like a banshee. Had a weekly C131 Aeromedical Samaritan that I think originated at Mildenhall and trolled around all of the European USAF Bases collecting patients and apparently US Servicemen or dependants had to be seriously ill to get on it. Also V Bombers used Prestwick as a Dispersal Base and there were special alert pads for 2 V Bombers that led onto the runway. I once saw a practice scramble. Very impressive too. I spent 38 years in Air Traffic Control. Our daughter is now an Air Traffic Controller at Swanwick centre near Southampton and our son works for Ryanair maintenance at Prestwick airport.

Welcome to AiX scopie5861, did you do ATC time at other airfields?

Hi All,

Thanks for the reply.

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REF,

we sure could post something in the memorial section. Would you like me to create a new post in that section or would you like to go ahead with it? I do have a picture showing the design of the plaque which we used to get prices if it is of interest

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cbrjock,

You beat me to it! It is indeed that plane but the serial is 42-95238 (there seems to be a lot of publication with an extra 2 in that number)

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Denis,

Yes please any advice on fundraising would be welcome, it id the firdt project of the sort my friend Neil and I have undertaken, so as far as fundraising goes we're rookies!

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As part of the research we looked for the grave and date of birth all each member of the crew. They were all buried in Cambridge at first but after the war 6 were returned to the US. It took quite a bit of effort to find them as the record in Cambridge only gave the US state they were returned to. The reason why we wanted to find all the graves was so that on the day of the unveiling we can arrange for flowers to be placed on each grave. We also managed to get all the DOB so that we could put their age on the plaque to sort of remind people how young these men were.
We also attempted to find and contact relatives to let them know about the research and plaque. So far we have traced and got in touch with relatives for 7 out of 10 of the crew. And for three of the families we have got in touch with living brothers of the crew! One of the family members we got in touch with also ended up helping with the research and gave a picture of the crew, see here:

www.801492.org/Air%20Crew/Cherrington/40...CherringtonCrew.html

Altogether we managed to get a fascinating insight into who they were. They came for all corners of the US, were of three different religions, one of them was Jewish. They also had all sort of family background, three of them were married and it seems that one of them had a child.

We are putting together a report on the findings which will be available in a few weeks on the aforementioned webpage.

Should anybody like any more details, feel free to come to the presentation on the 19th of September at the village hall in Burghill (message for more details).

Thank you all again

Jerome