By Ellenor Lambert
I served for three years at Pocklington from 1942 as a WAAF Telephonist serving in the “Ops“ Room but it was not until the late 90*s, when reading a book on Yorkshire Airfields by Patrick Otter that I came across the result of an incident in which I had been involved on the night of 26th.November 1943.
That night, I was on duty in the Ops room at Pocklington, the Duty Officer being Flt/Lt. D'Arcy Hilyard. Base operations had been scrubbed because of fog so I was most surprised when the switchboard alarm sounded in the early hours of the morning. On answering the phone I was asked if Pocklington could accept some 5 Group aircraft that were returning from a raid, short of fuel, and had to be diverted from their base because of fog. I said that we also had a fog problem but connected the call to Flying Control, while the Duty Officer telephoned Air Commodore walker who lived off the Base in Pocklington.
By the time I had alerted the Fire Section, Ambulance, Medical Officer and other essential services the AOC had arrived and, after a few words with the Duty Officer, rushed off to Flying Control. I was off duty the next day so I heard very little detail of the unfortunate events that unfolded and one did not ask too many questions in those days. So after all the intervening years all was revealed when I read Patrick Otter's book.
Two of the Lancasters from 50 Squadron based at Skellingthorpe, Lincs, managed to get down at Melbourne but crashed into each other and, although all the aircrew survived, the driver of a van, on the runway for some reason or another, was killed.
Another Lanc., whilst trying to land at Pocklington, crashed at Hayton, near Market Weighton, killing five of the crew plus two ladies in, a farmhouse that they hit. There must have been other aircraft seeking safety from the fog that night and I wonder whether any other members have memories of that particular night.
In fact, this was not the only occasion when Lancasters from Skellingthorpe had to divert north because of the weather. Aircraft from the same Squadron were involve almost a year later in a similar situation on 29th/30th October 1944,- but without trouble. I suppose that the people responsible for selecting the siteing of airfields must have been aware of the prevalence of fog during the winter months in the east coast areas. In the latter part of the war, FIDO relieved the problem to some extent, but it still another hazard among the many others that our bomber crews were expected to overcome and, sadly, must have added considerably to the cost of the Bomber Offensive in both aircraft and lives.
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