SOARING EAGLES FELL TO EARTH – BUT FLEW ON, UNDAUNTED….

By Paul Allonby

AMERICAN aviators who wished to join the Royal Air Force as fighter pilots when their own country was neutral were assigned to three Eagle squadrons…volunteer units who flew in action after being formed between September 1940 and July 1941.

One such unit was 121 Squadron, based at RAF Kirton-in-Lindsey in North Lincolnshire, which was equipped when Hawker Hurricane fighters after being established in May 1941.

Among the pilots was Bradley Smith, 27, from Yonkers in New York, who had travelled across the Atlantic after joining the Royal Canadian Air Force in Windsor, Ontario, in July 1940.

A college graduate and the son of a doctor, he had already served as a Flying Cadet with the US Army Air Corps learning to fly at Randolph Field, Texas, before stepping-up to answer the call to help the Royal Air Force,

Following training at Calgary in Canada, he was assigned the rank of Sergeant and by March 1941 was learning his trade flying RAF Spitfires with 57 Operational Training Unit at RAF Hawarden, Cheshire.

On March 28th 1941, while flying Spitfire L1030, Sgt Smith became lost in bad weather and was forced to make a wheels-up emergency landing at Great Ness near Shrewsbury.

The drama however did not prevent him from completing his tuition with the two-month-long No 19 Flying Training Course and on May 14th 1941 he joined 121 Squadron on its first day.

Also posted to 121 Squadron on July 1st 1941 was Pennsylvanian Warren Vincent Shenk, also a Sergeant, who’d joined the RCAF in 1940 and received his ‘’wings’’ in March 1941 after training at Dunnville, Ontario. Known to all as Vince, he underwent fighter training on Hurricanes with 56 OTU at RAF Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire, prior to being assigned to 121 Squadron.

On July 27th 1941, the two colleagues climbed aboard Hurricanes Z3317 and Z3422 to undertake a Sunday evening interception and formation training session. Punching through the clouds above North Lincolnshire, the aircraft engaged in a mock dogfight….the squadron was now operational and soon destined to play a key role in taking the war to the Germans with fighter sweeps over Northern France.

However, as the aircraft passed through a cloud bank, disaster struck, with one Hurricane scything in to the other, severing the tail fin and giving both pilots no choice other than to bale out.

They took to their parachutes, believing they were over open countryside. One aircraft dived straight down, the other headed for the ground in a gently descending arc-shaped path.

BUT – they were over the city of Lincoln. Residents watched in horror as the stricken aircraft headed downwards. One sliced through the top-floor and roof of a house in Duke Street, near the city’s racecourse.

And the second, hurtling downwards at a 45-degree angle towards the city centre, impacted a mile-away in Oxford Street, which was flanked by Lincoln Railway Station.

The crashing Hurricane caused devastation. Two houses were flattened, others caught light, along with nearby commercial premises.

Arriving on the scene, Police Constable Sam Hundleby, rapidly assessed the situation. He was advised people were trapped in the burning buildings, and saw two men lying apparently dead in the street.

Despite the searing heat, and ammunition from the aircraft exploding, he worked to rescue six people from one house, and assisted in bringing others to safety from another house, with the help of two men.

He then entered a blazing house where he found a woman badly injured but alive in the basement, while firemen found another woman, Mrs Elizabeth Spray aged 57, fatally injured with severe burns in the ruins of the lounge at her home.

In total, six people with a range of injuries were taken to Lincoln County Hospital, along with Sgt Shenk who had been hurt baling out. The woman rescued by PC Hundleby – Mrs Nellie Mastin, 58, succumbed to her injuries a month later.

The male fatalities were: Mr Ernest Radford, 59, director of vehicle dealership Gilberts of Oxford Street, and Airman Wallace Lockerbie, 20, from Gilesgate in Durham City, who had been travelling past on his motor-cycle.

The tragedy was the subject of an inquest, reported in the Lincolnshire Echo on July 31st 1941:

Airmen Did Not Know They Were Over Lincoln: Inquest on Crash Victims

Questions about flying over cities were put to two sergeant-pilots by the Coroner (Mr. Reynolds Scorer) at an inquest at Lincoln County Hospital yesterday on the three people killed when one of two planes which crashed in the city fell in Oxford Street on Sunday Evening.

Both men replied that, being above the clouds, they thought that they were some miles away from Lincoln at the time.

A verdict of “Death by misadventure” was returned in the case of each of the three victims, the jury complimenting P.C. Hundleby, of the Lincoln City Police, on his brave conduct in entering burning houses and ensuring the safety of the inmates.

The three victims were:

Aircraftsman Wallace Lockerbie (20), whose home address is Gilesgate, Durham.

Ernest A. Radford (59), of 46, Shakespeare Street, Lincoln, director and manager of Messrs. Gilberts vehicle dealership, Oxford Street.

Mrs Elizabeth Spray (57), of 5, Oxford Street, Lincoln.

The Coroner explained that on Sunday evening, about 6.30, two planes collided and crashed in Lincoln, one in Oxford Street, and the other in Drake Street.

Mrs. Spray was in her house in Oxford Street at the time. The house was wrecked and she was later discovered in the living room, severely burnt and dead.

Mr Radford was in Oxford Street when some part of the plane struck him.

Airman Lockerbie was motor-cycling along Oxford Street, and he was also hit by some part of the plane. The pilots of the planes escaped by means of their parachutes.

Sergt.-Pilot Warren V. Shenk said that on Sunday evening he and Sergt.-Pilot Bradley Smith were flying at about 8,500 ft. They got separated and lost a bit of altitude to about 7,000 ft. There was a cloud protruding above the general level of the cloud banks and this intervened between them. He started a climbing turn to go over the cloud, but got into it and then there was a crash.

Pc Hundleby, a married man with a young daughter – and who was Acting Group Scoutmaster attached to the 11th Lincoln Troop – was awarded a commendation by City of Lincoln Police Chief Constable, Mr C H Walters, endorsed by Lincoln City Council’s Police Committee, and was also honoured with the Scout Movement’s Gilt Cross for Gallantry in the Face of Danger, the first such recipient in Lincolnshire. In his acceptance remarks, he said he viewed the award as not just being for him but also for the “fine fellows’’ who helped in the rescue work and who tended the casualties.

• Vince Shenk resumed duties and was commissioned in November 1941. He served as a Hurricane pilot with the Merchant Ship Fighter Unit, which countered the threat of Luftwaffe long-range anti-shipping strike aircraft marauding around trans-Atlantic convoys, and survived one parachute descent into the North Atlantic. He served also as a fighter and ground-attack pilot with 127 Squadron, on home defence duties in Canada, before serving in with 443 ‘Hornet’ Squadron and 442 ‘City of Vancouver’ Squadrons, RCAF, attached to RAF Fighter Command UK, and finished the war as a Flight Lieutenant, despite being injured in a flying incident in July 1944. He drew 443’s last combat blood, badly damaging a Luftwaffe FW190 on April 16th 1945, and – as a Flight Commander – participated in the unit’s final mission of WW2 – after Germany had surrendered – when the British Army and Royal Navy liberated the Channel Islands on May 9th 1945. Married with two children, he died in 1959 aged 43.

• Bradley Smith was not injured in the collision over Lincoln. He was featured in the New York Times in February 1942 for heroism while strafing a heavily-guarded factory – and a locomotive – in a mission over France. A married man, he left the RCAF in February 1943 as a Flying Officer to re-join the United States Army Air Force. He survived the war, and passed away at his home in New York State in 2001. No medals were awarded to either Bradley Smith or Vince Shenk by either the RCAF or RAF for their service, although they were each awarded a post-war honorarium by the US government from between Dec 7th 1941 until their date of severance of service with RCAF – Feb 1943 for Bradley Smith, Sept 1945 for Vince Shenk. Service prior to America’s entry into the war was not eligible when payments were calculated.

• On 29 September 1942, the three Eagle Squadrons – 71, 121 and 133 - were officially transferred from the RAF to the US 8th Army Air Force in England, with the American pilots becoming officers in the USAAF. The Eagle pilots had won 12 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and one Distinguished Service Order. Only four of the 34 original Eagle pilots were still present when the squadrons joined the USAAF. Typical were the fates of the eight original pilots in 133 Squadron: Four died during training, one was disqualified, two died in combat, and one became a prisoner of war. About 100 Eagle pilots had been killed, were missing or were prisoners. The tally of the brave volunteers amounted to 73 German aircraft destroyed with many others damaged along with numerous ground targets from troop concentrations to enemy vehicles.

• The area of Oxford Street in Lincoln was archaeologically-examined during the building of the city’s new £30 million Transportation Hub (opened 2018) but no evidence of the crash was found despite some locals claiming the aircraft had been buried in situ. One also told the BBC they had even seen the “Spitfires’’ actually collide, although they were above the thick clouds level.

• A feature for those interested in reading of other wartime aircraft crashes in Lincoln can be found at:

https://www.christs-hospital.lincs.sch.uk/joomla35/index.php/our-school…





THANK-YOUs:

National Archives specifically relating to the Operational Record Books of 121 Squadron, and 57 OTU; the Royal Canadian Air Force Historical Branch specifically records relating to the careers of both featured pilots, access to the Operational Records of 442 and 443 Squadrons, and for access to the papers of the late Wing Commander Douglas Harvey; Lincolnshire County Council Archives; Lincolnshire Police; Flt Lt Evan Ross, RAF; Brigadier General Philip Caine, USAF (retired) and Permanent Professor of History at the US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs (whose specialisms include the Eagle Squadrons); the excellent http://immigrantsofwar.blogspot.com resource on US airmen who served with the RAF and RCAF; the Library of Congress; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission; the archives of the Gilbert & Son Motor Company of Lincoln; London North Eastern Railways; the editor of the Lincolnshire Echo; and the records of the Scouts Association. For those interested in the RCAF’s role in WW2, I recommend the series “The Royal Canadian Air Force Overseas’’ published in 1949 by Oxford University Press in Toronto, forward by Brooke Claxton, Canadian Defence Minister (RCAF Official Histories) which provides a highly detailed and richly illustrated well-written account. Also, thanks to The Canadian Fighter Pilot & Air Gunner Museum, Ottawa.

THIS ACCOUNT, COMPILED FROM VALIDATED SOURCES AND ORIGINAL RECORDS, IS PUBLISHED TO COUNTER SEVERAL HIGHLY INACCURATE ARTICLES FOUND ON THE INTERNET AND WAS COMMISSIONED AS A LINCOLNSHIRE COUNCIL RESOURCE.

AUGUST 2019 – from research carried out May-August 2019.