Staff information plea

STAFF at BUPA Murrayfield, Thingwall, are researching the worst plane crash on Merseyside during World War II with a view to providing a memorial to the tragedy.

Merseyside bore the brunt of the German Nazi bomber Blitz and was the headquarters for the Battle of the Atlantic convoys.

But the facts behind the Liberator B24 crash, on a field near where the BUPA hospital now stands, seem to have been victim of a cover-up.

In heavy rain, on the afternoon of October 18, 1944, the bomber with 24 American airmen aboard blew up in the sky over fields between Landican and Thingwall.

Bodies and wreckage fell onto the field. Everyone on board died, including 15 commissioned officers. Locals rushed to the scene in the hope of finding survivors . . . what they found they will never forget. Small fires were burning, causing ammunition from the plane to fire off, and a dog was running wildly from body to body.

Some of the victims had their parachutes on, only partially opened. Others wore life jackets, thinking the plane was coming down over the Mersey.

American soldiers from a nearby army camp moved the bodies to a hospital at Clatterbridge and put the mass morgue under armed guard.

Later they were taken to Cambridge for a full military funeral. Today only four graves remain there; the rest are now in the United States.

Murrayfield's Human Resources Manager Carolyn Jowitt and Marketing Manager Barbara Graham read of the disaster in a local history book, 'Thingvelle' by Irby's Greg Dawson.

The disaster scene remains a rural green space, lying between a motorway and the built-up areas of Birkenhead, Thingwall and Barnston.

"We will be contacting peopple to see what can be done to honour these young men who died for this country a long way from their homes," said Barbara.

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