I thought I would post these pics of a monument I saw back in September whilst on holiday in Braemar. The Thing that really shook me was that the ‘old man’ of the crew was only 25 and the rest were aged between 19 and 23. For all the fact that they died on a training flight they were still war losses and would likely not have survived the conflict. In view of that I still feel that they should be included in the saying ” for our today thay gave their tomorrow’.
The description of the circumstances of their deaths is necessarily brief due to the limited space available on the monument, if anyone can go into more depth I would be interested. I find it amazing that there weren’t more crews killed in that area as R1646 was just one of a few crashes around the village.
We will remember them.
By: mike currill - 15th November 2008 at 11:56
Thanks very much mate, that’s exactly the kind of thing I meant. I’ll have to come back to that when I have more time as I want to read it thoroughly.
By: archieraf - 13th November 2008 at 23:44
Hi Mike,
Thanks for posting those pictures and bringing attention to the memorial in Braemar to the crew of Wellington R1646. It’s a memorial close to my heart having been involved in researching the loss of the crew prior to the unveiling.
On Tuesday 11th November at 11am in gentle rain I stood for two minutes at the memorial to pay my respects. There was one other person there, a tourist, who took the time despite there being several coach loads of visitors in the village at the time and the memorials being right in the centre.
Despite it being a training flight, some of those onboard had already completed a tour of ops and were flying as Instructors. F/O Thomson DFC from New Zealand completed a tour with 75 Squadron and Sgt Riley from Yorkshire had completed a tour with 218 Squadron.
You can read the story about what happened here http://www.archieraf.co.uk/scs/wellingtonr1646.html and follow the links from that page to read about each member onboard, the crash site as it is today and the story of the unveiling of the memorial by The Princess Royal in 2003.
The airmen killed came from NZ, Australia, Canada and the UK.
There were plenty of other losses in the mountains in that area, a few of them are covered on my website. The plaque on the memorial in Braemar actually mentions the fact that it is there to commemorate all airmen lost in the Cairngorm mountains too.
Hope you find it of interest.
Regards
Linzee
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November 13, 2008 at 8:32 pm