Call to commemorate victims of ‘forgotten’ WWII air crash

As the awful news unfolded on the sunny Saturday morning, one newspaper headlined the tragedy ‘10 Killed, Others Injured, as Bomber Death-Dives onto Ulster Canteen.’

Probably due to government censors the initial reports didn’t mention the location, at R.A.F. Aldergrove - a strategically vital Coastal Command Station for Allied aircraft patrolling the Eastern Atlantic.

The News Letter headlined the story ‘Bomber Crashes in Ulster’ and added - ‘Ten Persons Killed. Body of a Machine Falls on a Canteen. Six of Victims Girls.’ Another newspaper carried a stark report - ‘Plane Dived Through NAAFI Roof in Ulster’.

Proud of their Latin motto ‘Servitor Servientium’, meaning ‘servant of those who serve’, the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) set up and staffed recreational facilities, shops and canteens, on British military bases around the world.

By the end of WWII the organisation boasted some 1,400 canteens in Great Britain alone. Aldergrove’s NAAFI team had just served elevenses and were preparing for the lunchtime rush on that fateful Saturday in 1941.

“I have been researching this terrible crash for a long time,” WWII historian Andy Glenfield told Roamer after sharing some wartime accounts on this page a few weeks ago.

Andy wants “some sort of recognition for those women, because they were civilians they are not named on war memorials. You have to be military to be on a war memorial. So there’s no memorial to them.”

He has contacted numerous people and interested groups “to try and get something done” he explained. There’s a full outline of the tragedy on his Second World War Facebook and website at www.ww2ni.webs.com and if anyone has more information, he’d love to hear from you.

At 11.35am on 19 July 1941 a Bristol Blenheim Mk IV from 254 Squadron based at R.A.F. Aldergrove was being piloted by Flying Officer Walter Hargreaves King. The Bristol Blenheim was an armed, light bomber with a crew of three, used for maritime patrols.

Flying Officer King was flying low over the airfield when he struck an obstruction. On the R.A.F. official report the obstruction was initially recorded as a ‘telegraph pole’ which was crossed out and ‘wireless mast’ was inserted.

The plane slammed into the roof of the NAAFI building packed with Saturday’s lunchtime staff, its fuel tanks burst and a blazing flood of aviation fuel caused a devastating inferno that killed six women working inside and injured five others.

“With all that burning aviation fuel flying around I am sure it was a horrible scene,” Andy explained, adding, “some of the NAAFI women were trapped in the collapsing building, some were killed outright while others were injured.”

Aircraftman Clifford Henry Hore, aged 20, died outside, hit by flying wreckage.

More wreckage catapulted into an adjacent aircraft maintenance hangar where a Ground Defence Force unit was drilling.

The tragic irony was that they were practicing a funeral march for a forthcoming funeral - 13 men were injured, one spent over a year recovering in hospital.

The three Bristol Blenheim crewmen died - Flying Officer King, Sergeant Philip Evans Neale and the 18-year-old wireless operator, Sergeant Richard Edward Lea.

The RAF Operations Record book stated that the aircraft ‘became uncontrollable’ and crashed through the NAAFI building’s roof where the fuel tanks burst and ‘set the building on fire.’ Fire tenders from Aldergrove and Nutts Corner rushed to the scene and extinguished the blaze, but not before such a tragic loss of life and serious injury. The six N.A.A.F.I. women who died were:

Margaret Castles aged 24 from Lisburn and Annie Watson from Belfast, both buried in Belfast City Cemetery;

Annie Violet Crozier from Belfast, buried in Knockbreda Cemetery; Elizabeth Osborne from Lurgan, buried at Lurgan First Presbyterian Church; Brigid McGarry from Crumlin, buried at Glenavy Roman Catholic Church and Mary Mulholland from Aldergrove, buried at Aldergrove Roman Catholic Church.

Andy Glenfield told Roamer that none of NAAFI women’s headstones mention the crash and the R.A.F. Air Historical Branch’s casualty file “does not contain any details” about them. He and others are hoping for a proper memorial.