2010 B-17 Memorial Tributes

“To all the lovely people at Redlingfield, my sincere thanks for your efforts to memorialize those who died to keep our nations free from tyranny. My name is L B Strawn. Warren M Strawn was an older brother.”

“My name is Ralph Schimmel and I live in the US and I am a nephew of Sgt Charles E Phinney. This past week I had it on my heart to do some research on my Uncle Charles and wow, I retrieved this info on the memorial event you folks put together. I was blown away quite honestly.”

Marcia A Moyer: "We are so humbled that after all of these years my uncle would be recognized ... My mother mentioned that my Uncle Mansfield (Warren M. Strawn) had made friends with an English family while he was over there but she didn't know their names. That's a shame because I would love to find out who they were and find out about their association with him while he was there.”

95th Bomb Group Memorials Foundation Memorials Chair Margaret Blagg: "What a wonderful thing for the residents to do. It humbles me to think that 66+ years later our British friends still feel this loss so keenly that they are erecting this memorial."

Every Friday November 19th villagers and members of the 95th Bomb Group Heritage Association/Red Feather Club gather to commemorate the ten US airmen who died when their aircraft crashed near the village on that date in 1943. At 8.30am - the time of the crash - a wreath is laid on the memorial commemorating the men whose B-17 crashed new destroying Green Farm. The memorial is maintained beautifully by Gail & Eddie Hawes. Along with the First World War memorial in Redlingfield churchyard poppy wreaths are laid for Remembrance Day.

Visit our Local History pages for more about the crash and the villages' involvement with the 95th Bomb Group during the Second Wold War. Click for Richard E Flagg's memorials' website. The event was covered by local newspapers and both regional TV news programmes and it was also the Memorial Day front-page of The Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana, the home town of pilot Kenneth Rongstad. See the Daily Inter Lake article front page front page and inside. Click for the BBC Look East item and for the Anglia TV coverage on Youtube (the reporter has apologised for calling the village Redlington).

If you have any memories or pictures of the crash, or the village itself, please share them with us at email@ redlingfieldparishcouncil.gov.uk