no place is safe
When war came again in 1939, British parents knew that hard decisions lay ahead.
Most had been children during the Great War twenty years before.
They remembered the menace of Imperial Germany’s zeppelins hovering over British cities, dropping bombs willy-nilly on civilian as well as strategic targets, killing hundreds as they slept in their beds.
Planning for the mass evacuation of children and expectant mothers out of British cities and into the countryside became a priority for the British government beginning in 1938, more than a year before the war started.
The first of several large evacuations took place in late August 1939, three days before Hitler launched the invasion of Poland that sparked the war.
And more than one million were evacuated during 1944 to avoid the danger posed by the Nazis’ new V-1 rockets.
Among those who left their parents in 1944 were three little children from Greater London who were sent to homes in Freckleton, a village of nine hundred people located two hundred thirty miles to the north that was thought to be safely out of danger.
The three were accompanied by a veteran teacher, age sixty-four, who intended to stay on and teach in the Freckleton elementary school for a year and then retire.
The new war had changed Freckleton from a sleepy little village to a bustling commercial center the locals called “Little America.”
Ten thousand Americans worked at an RAF airfield on the outskirts of town which the US Army Air Forces used as a depot for repairing B-24 heavy bombers which had been damaged in action over northern Europe.
American servicemen dated local Freckleton girls and relaxed at the “Sad Sack Snack Bar” in the center of the village, named after the American comic book character.
After work crews finished repairing the damaged B-24s, it was routine for test pilots to take them for test flights before returning them to service.
On the morning of August 23, 1944, two experienced test pilots, each with hundreds of hours of flight time, did just that, taking two refurbished B-24s into the air over Freckleton.
The planes had been airborne for just a few minutes when flight controllers at the airbase were warned that a violent thunderstorm was approaching quickly.
They radioed the two aircraft, then more than four miles away, instructing them to return to the base; and the pilots prepared to land their planes amidst shifting winds, thunder, lightning and torrential rain.
From a Freckleton resident:
“I have never known a day before or since to go from daylight to total darkness in such a short space of time…
“The thunder and lightning were the worst I've ever known.”
One of the pilots decided he was unable to land his plane in such conditions and turned away from the airfield, flying north ten miles to escape the storm.
The other pilot, flying the Classy Chassis II, radioed the control tower that he was experiencing violent turbulence and would abort his attempt to land and circle the airfield.
But he struggled to regain altitude, and witnesses later said they saw lightning strike his aircraft.
Flying low in blinding rain, the aircraft severed the tops of trees as winds tipped the plane’s wings into a vertical position, etching a scar across the land.
The plane’s fuselage then plowed into buildings in Freckleton, including the Sad Sack, and its engines and fuel tanks slammed into the village elementary school, igniting a blaze on impact.
It was the second day of the new school term, and 176 young children were inside.
From a survivor:
“I honestly can't say I remember the moment of impact.
“What I do recall very clearly is everyone in the classroom being pushed towards the door in an attempt to escape.
“I seem to remember that I was the first to reach the door and as I opened it, all I could see were flames and falling debris.
“There was glass everywhere and smoke made it very difficult to see beyond a few feet.
“I knew we had to get out, and we just kept heading away from the fire through the boy's cloakroom.”
The crash killed the three men aboard the B-24 and fifty-eight people on the ground.
Thirty-eight of those lost were children between the ages four and six who were inside the school, including the three who had been evacuated from Greater London to Freckleton and their teacher-chaperone.
Children in undamaged sections of the school poured into the schoolyard in a panic, only to find the schoolyard gate locked.
American servicemen who happened to be in the village heard their screams and immediately scaled the six-foot wall of the schoolyard to lift the children to safety.
Crash debris blocked access to the village water supply, so American servicemen brought in a portable water pump and connected it to an alternative water source.
While firefighters and village residents stayed at the scene into the early evening, until the fire was extinguished and no more survivors could be found, American servicemen, along with some from the RAF, cleared ruble through the night with the help of searchlights brought from the airbase.
When the community decided their dead children should be buried together, American servicemen prepared their communal grave in the village churchyard and carried the little coffins there.
In the months that followed, airmen stationed at the airbase raised tens of thousands of dollars for a memorial garden and children’s playground, and American servicemen built it.
In the next few years, these Americans sent four hundred books to the Freckleton library.
Many have returned there for somber visits.
It is said that, outside of Freckleton, few know about the crash.
The liberation of Paris from the Nazis dominated the news that August, and the Freckleton air disaster received little coverage.
But among the thousands of accidental air crashes which occurred during the war, it was this one that took the most lives.
As those sad parents of Freckleton could attest, in a European war, no one, anywhere, is really safe.
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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