Great Gransden (Hayley Wood) Lancaster Memorial

The night of 16/17 December 1943 became known in Bomber Command as "Black Thursday." A force of nearly 500 aircraft took off to attack Berlin as part of the sustained Battle of Berlin campaign. Casualties over the target were relatively light, but the real disaster struck as the bombers returned to their English bases. A rapidly deteriorating weather front rolled across eastern England, bringing fog, low cloud, and freezing conditions. Across Bomber Command, seventy aircraft crashed attempting to land in conditions that made their home airfields invisible. No. 97 Squadron at Bourn suffered some of the worst losses of the night -- not from German defences but from English weather. Lancaster JB219, piloted by Flying Officer James Kirkwood, completed the round trip to Berlin successfully but could not find a way through the murk blanketing the Cambridgeshire fens. At 00:10 hours on the 17th, the Lancaster crashed into Hayley Wood, a patch of ancient woodland just south of RAF Gransden Lodge, killing all seven crew members. The crew were young: four of the seven were twenty-one or twenty-two years old. Kirkwood, at twenty-eight, was the eldest. Their burial locations -- scattered from Scotland to Dorset, from Manchester to London -- reflect the nationwide draw of Bomber Command's volunteer crews. A memorial now stands at the crash site in Hayley Wood.