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Seventy-fifth anniversary year of WWII Lancaster bomber crash at Bicker




It's 75 years since the seven man crew of a WWII Lancaster bomber perished as their aircraft dived in flames and crashed in a remote spot in Bicker.

The bodies of six of the men are underground at the crash site where, since 2004, the spot has been marked by a memorial plaque set into a brick cairn.

This year's service of remembrance at the memorial in Caythorpe Road takes place at 11am on Saturday, May 18.

A service will take place at the Lancaster Memorial, Bicker, on May 18.
A service will take place at the Lancaster Memorial, Bicker, on May 18.

At around 2.30pm that day, there will be a flypast by an aircraft from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

The ill-fated Lancaster ND 820 took off on a training flight from RAF Downham Market at 10.58am on April 10, 1944.

The bomber caught fire over Swineshead and crashed at11.20am.

The body of Flying Officer and bomb aimer Thomas Ferguson Wilson (26), of The Royal Canadian Air Force, was recovered and interred in a Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground in Harrogate.

The rest of the crew were listed as missing and are commemorated on the Runnymeade Memorial.

Stanley Naylor (96), from Kirton, is a WWII veteran who served in the RAF Regiment, and in 2013 printed a pamphlet giving a brief history of the crew and the training flight that ended in tragedy.

Dave Stubley, of the Lincolnshire Aircraft Recovery Group - the group that erected the memorial - has also researched the crash.

Dave believes "the auto pilot went faulty" on the day of the tragedy and the crash wasn't down to human error.

The story is all the more touching because the bodies of six men aged between 19 and 28 have remained underground for so many years.

Dave said: "They are still down there, in the aircraft, below the road. I think that makes it more poignant."

According to Stanley, the pilot was Flight Sergeant Douglas James Farrant (24), of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR), whose family were linked to Haverhill, Suffolk, and London.

Sgt Farrant's experience extended to 254 flying hours and 30 `bombing missions over Germany.

These are the fellow crew members whose bodies remain underground: Sgt Reuben Horace Frederick Malthouse (23), of the RAFVR, whose family lived in London; Warrant Officer Roland Thornton Lord (23), of the RAFVR, whose family lived in Oldham; Flight Sergeant Joseph Bernard Bannan (24), of the RAFVR, whose family lived in Head's Nook, near Carlisle; Flight Sergeant Anthony Ivor Gwynne Hunter (28), of the RAFVR, whose family lived in Leeds; and RCAF Sergeant John William Nixon (19) from Ontario.



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