Mounted on a wall inside the church.

A rectangular tablet with an etching of a tailfin on the top followed by the names of the crew members who all died in the crash listed in two columns. The plaque is inscribed in English in black lettering. 

On the morning of 24 March 1944, at 5.50 am, #42-38102 crashed at Bailey Hill near Birdbrook. The bomber had just taken off, fully loaded, from Ridgewell Airfield on a raid over Germany, part of the 381st Bomber Group based at Ridgewell. The ferocity of the crash and its aftermath was likely due to the plane being fully loaded with both fuel and bombs, some of which exploded and others which were subsequently defused. The incident resulted in the death of all the men aboard the airplane.

The brand new plane had just taken off for the Frankfurt mission, and was attempting to gain altitude and was only four miles from the base when something went wrong. In the darkness, the plane plunged downward into the newly plowed field of Bailey Hill Farm. Furrows could be seen in the earth where the four propellers hit, digging their way into the soil. The plane bounced, moved forward, then cut four more furrows in the soil. The bombs exploded and the speed of the plane and the burst of the bombs sent the plane in a forward direction, scattering the parts over the entire field and into the woods beyond.

Source of information: www.stambourne.com, www.findagrave.com

Source of photos: geograph.co.uk, Google Maps

To the memory of

the crew of the USAF B17 Flying Fortress from the 381st Bomb Group 

based at Ridgewell, which crashed in this parish at 05.50hrs March 24th 1944

HEROES ALL

(1^st column)

(2^nd column)