Wellington Bomber BK387
The Oakworth, Tewitt Hall Wood Wellington. Keighley News. Report by 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.
The Flight and subsequent crash
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.