Unveiling of Halifax Memorial on Cleeve Common
The incident
In the early hours of the morning of Saturday 26 August 1944, RAF Halifax bomber MZ311 crashed into the escarpment of Cleeve Common. All seven of the mixed Canadian/British crew lost their lives.
The aircraft was returning from a mission to lay mines off La Rochelle, western France, in a minefield codenamed CINNAMON. It belonged to 78 Squadron of RAF Bomber Command, based at RAF Breighton in Yorkshire.
The crash site is believed to be high up on the escarpment of Cleeve Hill, above ‘The Ring’ (Scheduled Ancient Monument) and not far from the trig point on the hilltop. The precise point of impact cannot be determined since debris was apparently strewn over a wide area. The most conclusive evidence for the location comes from the chance discovery of a small fragment of the wreckage among gorse bushes in August 2020.
Eyewitness accounts
Reportedly, one of the first people on the scene was Walter Hilsden, a boy who lived at Nutterswood, a small settlement on the edge of Cleeve Common. He arrived well before the RAF secured the site and was met by the grizzly sight of bodies still in the wreckage.
Bernard Parkin, anther local resident who was 14 at the time, recalls visiting the scene and recorded it in his 1944 diary for Tuesday 29 August. Ann Dembenski also vividly recalls visiting the crash site as an 11 year old girl. Although the wreckage had been removed by that time, she and her school friends picked up handfuls of ‘silvery tape’ (chaff) which had been scattered over a wide area.
The investigations
Neither the RAF accident investigation nor the subsequent Court of Inquiry were able to establish the cause of the crash. The aircraft appeared to have turned away from its flight path towards home base at RAF Breighton and was flying at low altitude. Although the weather was generally fair, Cleeve Common was shrouded by low cloud. The aircraft appeared to be serviceable, with engines running normally, and had sufficient fuel. The navigator’s log suggested he knew his position and no distress calls were made.
Colonel Philip Robson, Chairman of Cleeve Common Trust, commented:
“The reason for the crash will remain a mystery, but identification of the crash site from eye witness accounts and the fragment we found mean that we can now commemorate this tragic event as an important part of Cleeve Common’s history.”
The Memorial to the crew of MZ311
Of the crew of seven personnel, five belonged to the Royal Canadian Air Force and two were RAF. The oldest was aged 32 at the time of the crash; the youngest was just 19. Their names are now recorded for posterity on a monument erected by Cleeve Common Trust at the crash site.
Air Marshal Sir Dusty Miller KBE commented:
“With the end of World War II almost in sight, a fact unknowable at the time, these 7 young men, among countless other crews, bravely took to the air into the teeth of enemy flak and night fighters as they had done so very many times in the preceding months.
Having completed their hazardous mission off the west coast of France they returned towards the safety and comfort of their home base of RAF Breighton in Yorkshire, yet some unknown occurrence caused them to perish in a crash high up on the escarpment of Cleeve Common.
The courage of these men, alongside their contemporaries, to launch repeatedly into the night knowing full well that the odds against their survival were very high, is simply astonishing by any measure, which makes their loss in this way even more tragic.
We owe our freedom today to their unflinching courage and, ultimately, their sacrifice, and a chief role of the Royal Air Forces Association is to ensure that we and others proudly and thankfully remember them, as we do today.”
The monument is a naturally shaped piece of stone from one of the quarries on the Common. It is located not far from the trig point and topograph at the summit of Cleeve Hill escarpment, close to the Cotswold Way.