The Tewitt Hall Wood Wellington Crash
On the opposite side of the road to the Grouse Inn is an inconspicuous lane leading
to Tewitt Hall Wood. To those in the know the lane leads to the site of a fatal
air crash that occurred in 1944. If you are fit enough for a short walk please a
visit to the memorial of the 6 young Canadians who lost their lives.
The Canadian crew of a Wellington Bomber (BK 387) crashed into a hillside on a training mission at 22.40 hrs on January 2nd 1944. There were no survivors.
Report by Keighley News, Oakworth correspondent Jean Binney.
On the night of January 2nd, 1944, the main force of bomber command was once
again out in strength; that night, 383 Aircraft were on their way to the big
city, Berlin. 27 Lancasters were not to return to there bases in England, most
were lost in the Berlin area, some seven and half percent of the attacking
bombers missing. Eighty two houses were destroyed and thirty six people were
killed, Just another night for the crews of bomber command. The Operational
Training Unit, home of the O.T.U. was based eight miles north west of Newark.
This was at Ossington, and it was bases like these, flying the Vickers
Wellington, that all operational crew passed through on their way to squadron
service.
At 20.00 hours, Wellington BK387 lifted off from the Ossington runway on what
should have been just another training flight of four hours duration. Many local
people around Oakworth will tell stories of what they saw and heard on that
fateful night when the pilot, Flight Sergeant Ernest Glass, brought the aircraft
down through low cloud and subsequently crashed into the hillside at Tewitt Hall
wood. Six young lives were lost in a instant. The crew of BK387 were all from
Canada. If they had completed their training they would have joined one of the
16 Canadian Bomber Squadrons in Yorkshire. By the time the war ended, these
squadrons had flown some 40,822 sorties, they had lost 814 Aircraft and more
than 3,500 Aircrew were killed or missing. The total Bomber command losses were
a staggering 55,000 men. The remains of the aircraft were cleared away and
little remains today at the site of the crash except for the burnt and broken
trees which tell their own story. The crew were all buried at Stonefall
Cemetery, Harrogate, near Leeds, England along with many of their fellow
countrymen, all of whom paid the supreme sacrifice. All are buried on section C,
row H, graves 11 to 16.