81st Anniversary of Black Thursday

NEWS FLASH: Today, 16 December, there was supposed to be a dedication ceremony at RAF Wyton for the new memorial to Black Thursday, but unfortunately it had to be cancelled on the authority of the Station Commander. A different date will be arranged in the New Year.

Every year at this time we remember the Pathfinder crews lost due to fog and low cloud on Black Thursday, 16/17 December 1943.

This was a terrible night for Pathfinder bad-weather losses, with the following squadrons losing their aircrew in crashes after they had returned safely from the Berlin operation: two dead from 83 Squadron, six dead from 156 Squadron, fourteen dead from 405 Squadron, and twenty-eight dead from 97 Squadron, fifty men in all.

Amongst the dead were five members of the Thackway crew,, the foundation crew of our Archive; see: the Thackway crew. They died in a Lancaster crash near Hardwick, east of their home airfield of RAF Station Bourn. They were Ted Thackway, Sandy Grant, Tony Lawrence, George Grundy, and Jack Powell. There were two survivors: Peter Mack, who was critically injured, and Leslie Laver, who was uninjured and returned to flying with another crew a month later, only to lose his life on his first operation with them.

On Wednesday, 22nd December, 97 Squadron’s ORB noted:

Today S/L Mackenzie, Sgt Lawrence and six dominion aircrew who were killed on the 17th December were buried at CAMBRIDGE, the Station Commander, Squadron Commander, some officers and aircrew NCOs attended. The twenty other personnel were conveyed to their various home towns for burial, a representative of the Squadron was in attendance in each case.