War veteran to make visit to crash landing site 75 years on
Crew’s plane was fired at and guns and ammunition had to be jettisoned
A Second World War veteran is returning to Headcorn for the first time in 75 years after his crew crash landed their Lancaster bomber plane there.
Dick Raymond is the last surviving member of the seven-man ‘Lashenden Lancaster’ squad and served in the RAF for six years from 1942.
He will be travelling from his home in North Devon on Sunday to Headcorn Aerodrome. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, the airfield, formally known as Lashenden, was used as a base for the RAF and then the US Air Force. When the war finished, it was closed and returned to civil use in the 1950s as Headcorn Aerodrome. The children of Dick’s fellow crew member, Ken Lane, got in touch with him to get involved with the event.
He said: “It will be strange. I don’t know what to expect from the day. It came out of the blue.” The 95-year-old was a flight sergeant and flight engineer on Avro Lancaster ND467 OL-B of 83 squadron when it landed at Lashenden Airfield.
On the night of April 25, 1944, the crew dropped 1,650 incendiary bombs on the German city of Munich from 16,000ft.
During the raid, which was their 17th trip in the war, the aircraft came under fire and a number of their engines were damaged.
Dick, who was only 19 at the time, restarted one of the engines but only two remained in full working order.
In a bid to maintain height, the crew threw any unnecessary equipment out of the aircraft. Running out of fuel, several engines down and travelling at around 300mph, the pilot made a successful emergency landing. Speaking of those times Dick added: “Every time you climbed into the aircraft you didn’t know what was going to happen, there were so many things that could go wrong.
“People often say ‘Oh how brave to jump out of a plane’ but there was nothing brave about it. You just did it.”
Ken was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for the landing. It is given to officers for “acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying in active operations against the enemy”. He died aged 97.
The ‘Lashenden Lancaster’ crew returned to their base at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, the next day.