It was just after 12 noon on Saturday 25th of October 2014 that we arrived at Segar’s farm just off the coast road at Ainsdale to meet Mrs Joan Braid, now in her 80s, brought up on the farm and still living there, the only surviving witness to the disastrous B 24H Liberator crash which occurred on a misty day as she came home from school for lunch exactly 70 years ago.

Before going out onto the now uncultivated fields on the periphery of the old farmstead we looked at her scrapbook of newspaper cuttings and communications from American relatives of the seven American airmen who lost their lives that day returning for a period of rest and recuperation. They were all on their way home after flying together for a total of more than 370 missions.

After a chat we made our way to the fence now separating the farm from the airfield, now grown wild and rough, though the farmland, though rather poor and sandy, had once been productive until taken over by the RAF for the creation of the airfield at the beginning of World War II. With previous permission from the RAF we negotiated the barbed wire and made our way through hummocky overgrown grassland to the exact site of the crash. Mrs Braid was able to describe as a ten year old on this day at 12.50 pm exactly seventy years ago, seeing an American B24 Liberator approaching at a low level from the north-west in the direction of the control tower, but not landing immediately, circling round out to sea and then making a 2nd approach.

Unfortunately still on a slightly incorrect course, making a rapid correction the plane banked, when its starboard wing hit a field boundary (cop), causing the plane to cartwheel, crash and catch fire. Twenty veterans of the 446 Bomber group were immediately killed or badly wounded.

The incident seems to have been covered up by the US military for a long time and it was only 17 years ago that the relevant documents were declassified. It is now considered that this was arguably the most tragic non-combat related accident of the 8th Air Force during the war. Our informal visit today when we left a few flowers and a small wooden cross, appears to have been the first ‘memorial’ visit ever to take place at the original crash site, despite the clear description given by Aldon Ferguson in his excellent book on Royal Air Force, Woodvale the First Fifty Years published by Airfield Publications, 1991.

Aldon Ferguson, describes how over 24 airmen lost their lives one way or another during WW2 at RAF Woodvale.
Dr Reg Yorke (Edited Version)

Below are some pictures of the flowers laid at the site of the crash.

Below is the crash report from RAF Woodvale and photos of the crew, the final flight path and the wreckage.

These images have been provided by Aldon Ferguson and Chris Tompkins.

Below are some newspaper cuttings relating to the incident and again these have been provided by either Aldon Ferguson or Chris Tompkins.

These 2 photos are of the nurses that treated the injured airmen in Southport hospital in 1944 and many years later when Chris Tompkins visited Southport.