Victims of Freckleton Air Disaster remembered at memorial service, 82 years on
Sixty one people, including 38 children, died in the incident in 1944
Today is the 82nd anniversary of one of Fylde’s greatest tragedies.
An remembrance service and flower laying ceremony in the Church Yard of Holy Trinity Church, Freckleton recalls the day since the village air disaster claimed 61 lives, including 38 children.
On Wednesday, August 23, 1944, an American B-24 Liberator Bomber crashed into the centre of Freckleton during a violent storm.
It was one of two newly-refurbished B24’s being tested from the BAD 2 site of the American Air Forces base at Warton prior to delivery back to the front.
Both planes departed Warton Aerodrome on a test flight at 10.30am but due to an impeding storm, both aircraft were recalled to base shortly after take-off.
On return, visibility was recorded as “significantly reduced”. The first aircraft landed in the storm, but the second aircraft, named Classy Chassis II, being flown by 1st Lieutenant John Bloemandal reported he was aborting his approach to the airfield and was going round again.
The aircraft crashed into the centre of Freckleton demolishing three houses, the Sad Sack snack bar and as the plane broke up part of it crashed into the infants’ wing of the Holy Trinity village school causing a huge fireball.
It was the worst single greatest civilian air disaster suffered by the Allies in the Second World War.
The death toll of 61 included 38 of the four- to six-year-old children in the reception class, two of their teachers, the three USAAF aircrew, 1st Lieutenant Bloemandal, the pilot, Technical Sergeant Jimmie Parr, who was the co-pilot, and flight engineer Sergeant Gordon Kinney.
Alongside the residents killed, the staff and customers in the snack bar at the time including four RAF members and six USAAF personal sheltering from the storm also died.
The majority of the child victims along with Miss Jennie Hall, a teacher who had arrived at the school only the day before the accident, as well as a number of civilians killed in snack bar, were buried in a communal grave in the Holy Trinity churchyard.
It is there that the memory of those involved is recalled, by an annual ceremony on the anniversary.
Card doves bearing the names of each of those who died in the disaster were placed on a tree at today’s service.