Knowing him to be the font of all aviation knowledge relating to east Anglia , well the bit around Lowestoft anyway ! , I asked BobC for his comments on the thread which he has posted above for which thanks Bob . He also added the following in his reply to me ;

“Halifax B.III LK846 LK-R crashed in an orchard 330 yds S of Castle Farm, Rigbourne Hill, Beccles (Suffolk) at 1935 hours on 3 Aug 1944, whilst en route to Nieppe Forest (suspected V-1 storage site)

Eric Fox DFC (driver) told me in 1995 they flew through prop-wash from a formation of returning USAAF aircraft over Norfolk and this – in his opinion – damaged the control surfaces. His MUG reported one aileron was pointing upwards at an odd angle and the a/c became increasingly difficult to control. He baled the crew out and headed for the coast. He was unable to trim the a/c and the first time he released the controls to jump the control column was shuddering “like a butterfly” and he had to sit down and try something else. The aircraft kept pulling up and stalling and he was able to jump when this occurred by timing his climb onto the seat right. The a/c dived vertically into the ground and the bombs exploded making a crater 60 ft x 30 ft. Fortunately there was no damage apart from broken windows. The blast wall on top of a CD building in Norwich was reportedly cracked by the blast! Seconds more and the crash would have been in Beccles – a very lucky escape.

I met Eric Fox and took him round Beccles in 1998, to the site (now built on)and to Barsham where he had a reunion with the first person he met on landing in 1944. He died two years later.

I had a few small fragments found on a nearby field in 1974 which I mounted and presented Eric with at Flixton. I thought I had a cylinder head I tripped over on grassland near the site in 1973, but it is now in the LWMM (Lowestoft). There was one big lump found in a garden at Rigbourne Hill in the 80s which was donated to Flixton, but this too, is now at LWMM.”

On a personal note I attended several 578 reunions at Burn as well as squadron memorial dedications usually in the company of Bob and Eunice Davies , Bob was ex-578 before going to 214 and B-17’s at Oulton , and have myself met Eric Fox . It is sad that with the passing of time those that once seemed immortal are being proved to be mortal after all and that The Many of Bomber Command are becoming fewer by the year .