The price of freedom
It was hazy and warm, and soft grey clouds hung heavy with rain over the Thames Estuary as a flotilla of three rowing gigs, a trawler and a motor launch, all sat bobbing in the slight swell as Father Neil Dalley asked for a minute’s silence. We were stationed over the sunken remains of Heavenly Body II,A
USAF Flying Fortress bomber that had crashed into the Thames exactly 75 years ago to the day in much the same weather conditions.
The minute over, we raised our caps and scattered poppies into the now ebbing tide, to the memory of 11 American airmen whose B17s were shot up by ground forces as they attacked a V1 bomb site near Calais in France at the tail end of World War II.
Limping home to Kimbolton Airfield near Huntingdon, one of the damaged bombers, Aircraft 44-6133 (unlike Heavenly Body II
she was given no nickname) had started to malfunction and suddenly dropped out of the sky on top of Heavenly Body II before breaking up and crashing onto the mudflats at Allhallows in Kent. Only one of her nine crew survived, being thrown from the plane as it broke up and parachuting to safety. The others couldn’t get out as the impact had jammed all exit doors.
Earlier in the day we had also rendezvoused out close to the shipping lanes to remember the aircrew of this, the first bomber to crash.
Heavenly Body II, now badly damaged herself, flew on and what happened next was witnessed by Dennis Hill, then 14 years old, now an 89-year-old lifelong sailor, and former owner of the Colchester smack,
Emma, who was with the remembrance party.
‘The plane was obviously in trouble with smoke coming from her port inboard engine. I saw six or so parachutes come out of the aircraft, which was obviously still under command. It disappeared under the tree line and was heading straight for the heavily populated
Canvey Island’s massive oil refinery fuel tanks. Suddenly it reappeared and had turned round and was flying back out into the river before it pancaked off Canvey Point. It was a terrific bit of airmanship. I realised, even at that young age, I had witnessed something dreadful.’
Thirty-five of us who sail the river and whose craft pass over the remains of this fatal collision on every tide, had come to pay our respects and they included skipper of the motor launch, Calypso, Steve O’connell, a 61-year-old trans-ocean yacht delivery skipper; Clive Brumage, 56, waterman and owner of the 36ft Dutch sloop Hoog Springer and Phil Boyce, 50-year-old former dinghy racing champ and Tall Ship sailor. The moving ceremony was filmed by a BBC TV news camera team organised by yachtsman and oarsman Ron Sverdloff, who commanded his three pulling gigs, Spirit of Dunkirk, Spirit of Trafalgar and Victory to carry Father Neil to the hallowed spot.
Aboard the trawler Charlie Boy were relatives of the lost airmen.
Father Neil, whose church St Clements, at Leigh-onsea, sports a memorial to Little Ship sailors who lost their lives at Dunkirk, said: ‘As we pray for their souls and all those affected by war, let us also pray for peace throughout the world.’
As we bobbed on the grey tide, Father Neil also named those lost: Armand Ramacitti; William Hager; Donald Watson; Richard Ritter; Cecil Tognazzi; John Burke; Warren Oaks; Paul Haynes; Fred Kaufman; Edward Sadler; Louis Schulte.
They had been protecting our forbears from what we would now call a drone attack. During 1944 more than 8,000 V1s, aka doodlebugs, pilot-less, flying bombs, were unleashed on London, one of those landed on Canvey Island, just one month after the collision, killing two adults and two children.
Ron put it simply for all of us: ‘We enjoy every day of our lives because of these guys.’
We who sail the river had come to pay our respects