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A Plaque for the Wymeswold RAF Eagle MuralRalph Emmerson
The power of the internet My mother was born on the 11th November 1934. Having been born on Armistice Day almost led to her being called 'Poppy'. Sadly, she died in 2017 and now, on every Armistice Day, my father, Bill Emmerson, places flowers on her grave (in Elton, Cambridgeshire) along with two small wooden remembrance crosses – one for George Henderson (my great uncle who died in France on the 23rd October 1918) and another for Peter Emmerson. I retired from work in October 2022. In November 2023, when visiting my mother’s grave, I saw the tribute to Peter Emmerson again and talked to my father about him. All we knew was that he trained aircrew somewhere in the East Midlands and died when his bomber crashed. Peter Emmerson is my father’s first cousin, and my first cousin once removed. I can remember this story from childhood, but we had no more detail than this. Now retired, I have much more time to do non-work-related research. I thought it was time to find out a bit more about Peter Emmerson, so I simply put 'Peter Emmerson' and 'RAF' into Google and up came the RAF Commands website. This is an information and forum site for anybody researching the RAF in WW2. It gave me his date of death, the aircraft name and type that crashed, his age, his unit and rank, which cemetery he was buried in and his parents’ names. The International Bomber Command Website [2] gave similar information. Within minutes he was transformed from a name on a small wooden cross to a person with an identity and history. The Wellington Bomber Peter crashed in, was Wellington 1C DV771. Clicking on the hyperlinks on the RAF Commands website gave me all the names of the aircrew who died and took me to the Imperial War Museum war memorial register with information about the Eagle Mural war memorial at Wymeswold. My wife, Sarah, then searched 'Eagle Mural, Wymeswold' and was directed to the war memorials online website, which has a picture of the mural, its address, and information about the crash on the 25th November 1943. This site mentions the six crew that died and one who survived. It also mentioned an eighth crew member who died three days later from his injuries on the 28th November 1943 and this was the date of death of Pilot Officer Peter Emmerson (157736), an Air Gunner and Wireless Operator who served in the 28 Operational Training Unit at RAF Wymeswold and died at the age of 25. Within twenty minutes we knew all of this. Quite amazing but desperately sad. Finding so much so quickly just made me want to do more research. I had two lines of investigations to follow. Firstly, I knew my second cousin, Roy Emmerson, had done a lot of family tree work and was Peter Emmerson’s nephew. Roy’s father, Stanley, was Peter’s younger brother. I’ve never met Roy, but we have communicated by email in the past. I recontacted him through Ancestry.co.uk hoping that he may have more information. The second line of investigation was to do more online searches with one of the first websites found being the Wolds Historical Organisation. I contacted the WHO Vice-Chair, Bob Trubshaw, who then put me in touch with John Harrison. Roy and John have been pivotal to the rest of this story. Roy with his family information and research, which I will use a lot in this article and John for introducing my father and me to Wymeswold and its history. The final source of information, used throughout this article and in my own research, came from a stay at a WW2 Control Tower, now a B&B, in North Creake, Norfolk. One of the owners, Nigel Morter, is also the author of a thoroughly researched, detailed and referenced book about the control tower and I highly recommended it. A visit to Wymeswold On the 28th February 2024, my father and I visited Wymeswold. We had arranged to meet with John Harrison, who kindly went through all of the paperwork he had collected over the years about the Eagle Memorial. We walked down Hoton Road to visit the Eagle Mural and remember our cousin.
While viewing the memorial we called on Russell Hubbard, who had created the memorial in the 1980s. He was in and told us that he was only five years of age when the family saw the Wellington bomber in trouble and approaching their farmhouse. Mr Hubbard is convinced that the pilot saw the farmhouse and turned to avoid it, crashing into a nearby field, owned by another farmer. The rear of the plane was torn away, and the rear gunner got stuck in a tree. The remainder of the plane burst into flames. Mr Hubbard didn’t see the crash site itself as his family kept him safely indoors. The rear gunner was rescued by Mr Hubbard’s father and others and was the only survivor, with Peter Emmerson dying three days later in Loughborough Hospital of his injuries. We noticed that there was no plaque on the memorial, so unless you go online, you would not know what it commemorated. An idea was born. Research the Old-Fashioned Way (by Roy Emmerson) Roy’s father Stanley Emmerson did not talk very much about the war – he may have been too traumatised. He had to cope with his brother’s death, the Normandy Landings and the death of his mother (no leave granted) – all in a seven-month period when he was 20 years old – and the Relief of Belsen a few months later. He didn’t really talk very much about his family either. Roy began to research family history in the 1980s. In those days, it involved travelling to libraries and record offices and examining actual documents. Few of them were photographed, digitised, transcribed or indexed. Nowadays, we can easily look at the digitised image of a page and not realise how long it would take to find it without an index or how heavy some of the original documents are! Few documents relating to the Second World War were accessible. Roy found Peter’s death certificate, but it gives the cause of death as 'due to War Operations; certificate received from J. Bell, Officer Commanding' so not very helpful. He found the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s cemetery listings at Birmingham Central Library and was able to discover that Peter is commemorated at Glasgow Crematorium, situated within the grounds of the Western Necropolis. Then, in 2016, Roy contacted the Aircrew Remembrance Society who provided him with the date and location of the accident, together with names and details of the crew. Roy paid a visit to Wymeswold in 2017 to see a memorial on the wall of what is now the village pharmacy.The pharmacist provided him with some documents relating to the accident and the memorial. Peter Emmerson (by Roy Emmerson) Peter Emmerson was born on Sunday 31 March 1918 (Easter Day), the eldest of three sons (Peter, David and Stanley) of William and Elizabeth Emmerson. He was born in his mother’s family home in the Maryhill area of Glasgow. His father was on active service with the Royal Engineers in the First World War. After the War, the family moved to the Springburn area of Glasgow where William resumed his career as a Railway Clerk with the Caledonian Railway Company and where David and Stanley were born.
This is the only picture we have of Peter. He is sitting beside his father’s left arm and Stanley is the young boy held by his father. About 1930, the family moved to the Pollokshaws area of Glasgow. After completing his secondary education at Shawlands Academy, Peter worked as a Railway Clerk, following in the footsteps of his father. The Emmersons were a pacifist family and eldest son Peter Emmerson was a Conscientious Objector. After facing a Tribunal and winning his case, Peter enlisted for active service in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. The reasons for this were probably very complex. In simplistic terms, it may have been that he was prepared to trust Winston Churchill, but not Neville Chamberlain. We may never know how this Conscientious Objector ended up as a Pilot Officer in Bomber Command. Most air crew were non-commissioned officers. However, air crew were sometimes commissioned to do part-time administrative work.It may be that Peter’s pre-war experience as a Railway Clerk made him eligible to become a commissioned officer. Peter Emmerson’s War Service The rank of Pilot Officer is the lowest rank of commissioned officer in the RAF and can be misleading as it does not necessarily mean that the officer was a pilot, in fact Peter Emmerson was a wireless operator and air gunner who, once trained, went on to serve with 108 Squadron in Egypt. This squadron was a night bomber squadron flying Wellington Bomber 1Cs and was tasked with attacking Axis-held ports in Libya and Greece (see the squadron's online history). Using Peter’s war service record from the RAF Air Historical Unit, we can put together a timeline of his service. His service record and timeline are shown below.
Vickers Wellington B Mark ICs, formerly of No. 15 Operational Training Unit, parked at North Front, Gibraltar, while staging through the Mediterranean to join operational units in Egypt. BB459 'K' (right) went to No. 108 Squadron RAF at Fayid, while Z8960 'P' (left) joined 70 Squadron RAF at LG 104/Qotafiyah II. Image from IWM. After reaching the end of the first tour of 30 operations it was normal to be offered a break from active service at an Operational Training Unit (OTU) for six months before starting a second tour. This wasn’t always a guarantee of safety though as the accident rate was very high, with some OTUs losing as many as 25 percent of their trainees before graduation. A posting at an OTU also meant that an established close crew would be split up and start a second tour with new colleagues. This wasn’t popular and many volunteered for another tour straight away so they could remain together. Peter, however, did take up the opportunity to join an OTU and on the 3rd December 1942 he joined 28 OTU at RAF Wymeswold. Service Record
Timeline
A good source of information about an RAF airfield comes from the Operations Record Book (ORB) kept by that airfield. These can be obtained from the National Archives at Kew. This comprehensive record of airfield activity is not always detailed though, and the length of an entry seems to vary depending upon who actually made it. Mundane events are briefly described alongside significant incidents, but it remains a remarkable and useful historical record. The ORB for RAF Wymewold between the 3rd December 1942 and 28th November 1943, does not mention Peter Emmerson by name but it does record the many crashes that occurred in this area. The entry of the crash on the 25th November 1943 can be seen at the bottom of this page:
Details of the Accident (Compiled by Roy Emmerson) On 25 November 1943, Pilot Officer Peter Emmerson boarded a Wellington bomber 1C DV771 on a night training exercise. It took off at 19:05 from RAF Wymeswold in Leicestershire with a crew of eight (usually 5 if not training) mainly from the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.The trainee pilot was Flight Sergeant Francis William Greenwell of the Royal Australian Air Force. Peter Emmerson, as Air Gunner, was presumably near the rear of the plane. On returning towards the airfield at 22:55, the starboard engine burst into flames, sending the bomber crashing into a field. Six crew members died at the scene. Peter Emmerson, who was badly burned, was taken to hospital in Loughborough, where he died three days later. Sergeant S.S. Hewitt, the trainee Rear Gunner (the crew member extracted from the gun turret by the rescuers) was the sole survivor. His detailed statement to the Crown of Inquiry into the accident is still available (see page 331). Peter’s younger brother, Stanley Emmerson, was given leave from the Army to visit his brother in Loughborough. Peter was still alive at this time but was gravely ill. Stanley had just turned 20 – it was a traumatic experience. Later, Stanley had to identify the body and arrange the funeral. He had to persuade the doctors at Loughborough that he needed two of them to sign the forms for cremation as Scottish Law required two though English Law required only one. Peter was cremated at Glasgow Crematorium (Western Necropolis), where he is commemorated on the War Memorial.
In 1983, a report in a local Leicestershire newspaper commemorated the accident:
Mr Russell Hubbard helps to site the proposed new plaque for his war memorial 15th July 2024. Wellington Bomber 1C DV771 The twin engined Vickers Wellington medium bomber (or 'Wimpy') was first flown by chief test pilot Joseph 'Mutt' Summers at Brooklands on the15th June 1936. It had been designed by Vickers-Armstrong's Chief Designer, Rex Pierson, utilising the geodetic construction methods developed by Barnes Wallis for the earlier Vickers Wellesley. The geodetic airframe is formed by a spiralling, crossing, basketweave of loadbearing members which helps to cancel out torsional loads. Essentially, it forms two helices at right angles to one another so that the structure becomes mutually supporting and difficult to destroy. The frame then had wooden battens attached and was then covered in Irish linen treated with layers of dope (a plasticised lacquer used to increase the durability of fabric coverings and commonly using compounds such as nitrocellulose or cellulose acetate).
The first production Wellington (L4212) made its initial flight on 23rd December 1937. The most common Wellington Bomber variant in the early days of the war was the Wellington Mk. IC, of which 2,685 were built at Weybridge (Brooklands), Chester (Broughton) or Blackpool. Eventually the Wellington Bomber was superseded by the larger, four-engined heavy bombers such as the Lancaster, Halifax and Stirling. The final Wellington, a Mk. X (RP590), was delivered from Squire's Gate at Blackpool on 13th October 1945. In total 11,461 Wellington Bombers were built. During WW2, the allocation and movement of each aircraft was recoded on an Air Movement Form 78. These can still be obtained for research from the RAF Museum. The Wellington Bomber 1C DV771 that Peter Emmerson and six of his crew died in was built in Chester and delivered to No. 12 Maintenance Unit, a civil-manned Aircraft Storage Unit at RAF Station Kirkbride, Cumbria on the 3rd April 1942. After movements to 12 OTU (RAF Benson) and 30 OTU (RAF Hixon) it was delivered to 28 OTU at RAF Wymeswold on the 8th January 1943. All this is visible on its AM Form 78 below.
In column 7 of DV 771's AM Form 78 is an entry from 25th November 1943 stating: 'Burnt' and 'Cat E.' This refers to the RAF 54 (Salvage and Repair) Maintenance Unit’s crash categorisation which ranged from Category A (aircraft repairable on site) to Category E (beyond repair and only salvageable for spare parts). The final column entry on this Form 78 is 'SOC' referring to 'Struck Off Charge' which is the aircraft's removal from operational records. Many years later, in 1961, my father was working for Vickers- Armstrong as a young mechanical engineer. He was asked to visit the Weybridge factory as part of his familiarisation of the company and there, hidden away in a small office, working on satellite design, he met Barnes Wallis. Famous and still working but less influential. The Wellington Bomber DV771 Memorial Plaque at Wymeswold After our visit to Wymeswold on that cold February afternoon, I thought of what I had read and heard about the crash and the deaths of this group of young men. The war memorial was there but soon the story would be lost and residents of Wymeswold may not know what the mural commemorates. After staying at the Control Tower B&B, I remembered the effort Nigel Morter had gone to creating a memorial to all who served at RAF North Creake in Norfolk.
Sculpture entitled 'Home Safe' showing a Stirling Bomber and created by Andy Knighton at North Creake. I thought the least I could do was to raise a relatively small amount of money for a plaque to commemorate the seven aircrew, including my cousin, who died so close to the memorial and airfield in Wymeswold eighty-one years ago. Next year will be a year where we all remember the end of the second world war including the 55,573 young men who died flying with bomber command of which 8,000 died in training accidents or non-operational flying (17). With John Harrison’s help, we got a plaque design and quote from English Rose Memorials in Loughborough. Within months the community of Wymeswold had paid for the plaque. The funding came primarily from the Duck Race Grant Fund, Wymeswold Parish Council and Wolds Historical Organisation. My sincere thanks go to all these organisations. My final task was to try and contact family members of all the aircrew. With the help of Ancestry.co.uk I managed to contact relatives of five of the seven crew and a sixth family I had contacted earlier by a different route. This family had visited the Eagle Memorial in 1993 and John Harrison had shown me an article published in the Leicester Mercury about this. Through Hadnall’s Parish Council Facebook page, I found Patsy Patterson and have communicated with her throughout my journey. Her cousin, John Curry, was the Air Bomber on Wellington Bomber DV 771 and her son is named after him. They have provided more photographs, reproduced below.
Patsy Patterson’s visit to Wymeswold in 1993.
Sgt John Veitch Curry – Air Bomber DV771
Sgt Andrew McIntyre –– Wireless Operator DV771
Sgt Raymond Tasker McLean – Navigator DV771 So that is my story and my research. I have learnt a lot and feel amazed that men so young were asked to do so much. The plaque was unveiled by Russell Hubbard on 20th March 2025 during a Service of Dedication led by Rev Clive Watts. The Roll of Honour was read by John Patterson, a cousin of Air Bomber Sgt John Curry. He also read a letter to John Curry’s parents, written by a friend, explaining the crash to them. Roy Emmerson, nephew of Pilot Officer Peter Emmerson, read a lesson from the Bible and Rory Underwood, Deputy Lieutenant of Leicestershire, gave a short address. A bugler played the Last Post, followed by a minute's silence. Wreaths were then laid beside the memorial and prayers said to complete the short service. The congregation then went to the Three Crowns for refreshments.
On 11th November 1943, a small boy saw Wellington Bomber DV771 heading towards his farmhouse. He is sure the pilot changed direction to avoid the farmhouse at the last minute and crashed into a nearby field. Forty years later that boy, now a man, built the Wymeswold eagle mural memorial to commemorate the seven aircrew who died in that crash. Forty years after that, the same boy, now 85, unveiled the new plaque fitted to the memorial. That boy and man was Mr Russell Hubbard.
Left to right: Ralph Emmerson, cousin of air gunner Peter Emmerson. John Harrison, WHO member and local resident who helped with the purchase and installation of the plaque. Rory Underwood, Deputy Lieutenant of Leicestershire, RAF pilot and rugby legend. Russell Hubbard. Roy Emmerson, nephew of air gunner Peter Emmerson and Ralph Emmerson's second cousin. John Patterson, cousin of air bomber John Curry and named after him. Wendy Paterson, John's sister. Bill Emmerson, cousin of air gunner Peter Emmerson and Ralph Emmerson's father. Rev Clive Watts, vicar of St Mary's Church, Wymeswold. Mark 'Daisy' Day, Warrant Officer 504 Sqn.
This article about the events of the 25th November 1943, along with the plaque, will help us remember the seven men of Wellington Bomber DV771. It will also remind us of all the others who lost their lives flying out of RAF Wymeswold and gives us an opportunity to pay tribute to those who survived.
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