June this year marked the eightieth anniversary of D-Day, an occasion widely covered by the media and solemnly observed through remembrance ceremonies. These commemorations rightly honoured the brave men who gave their lives on that pivotal day as well as during the post-invasion weeks of June. The sacrifices included many men who left the New Forest by sea and air.
Using Beaulieu Airfield as an example, two young American pilots were killed on D-Day who flew with the Hell Hawks (365th Fighter Group), with a further eleven fatalities suffered over the remainder of June. This significant number of casualties is especially poignant, as these men lost their lives thousands of miles from their homes in the United States.
But in terms of death toll, June 1944 wasn’t the highest. That grim record goes to the month of August in 1943, when twenty-three Czechoslovaks and six Canadians were killed in five separate incidents after taking off from Beaulieu Airfield.
The first tragedy, which I have mentioned on this blog previously, occurred on Friday the 13th. A Wellington bomber assigned to the Royal Canadian Air Force was diverted to Beaulieu due to bad weather. After a few hours of rest, the crew decided to take off for their home airfield in Cornwall. Unbeknownst to them, they were flying into the flight path of an RAF Halifax that had taken off from RAF Holmsley South. The two aircraft collided in mid-air, and the wreckage fell on the village of Sway, killing all crew members on both bombers. Tragically, a man in Sway was also killed when the Wellington crashed into his home. All six Canadian men on the Wellington, which had left Beaulieu Airfield just ten minutes earlier, were killed.
Eight days later, on the 21st, tragedy struck Beaulieu Airfield again. This time, it involved a Liberator of No. 311 (Czechoslovak) Squadron RAF, with eight men on board. The aircraft failed to return from a sortie over the Bay of Biscay, where the Czechoslovak crew had been hunting for German U-boats.
On the 29th, a further eight Czechoslovak airmen were killed when their Liberator crashed in woodland a mile from the airfield. Then less than twenty fours later, another Czechoslovak airman was killed when his Liberator was hit by gunfire from a German aircraft. He died on board, and his distraught crew brought his body back to Beaulieu.
This dark month in Beaulieu Airfield’s history wasn’t over. On the 30th, six more Czechoslovak airmen died when their Liberator crashed near Brockenhurst.
August 1943 had been a horrific month for No. 311 (Czechoslovak) Squadron, with twenty-three men lost in the span of just nine days. Including the six Canadians killed at Sway, a total of twenty-nine men lost their lives that month after leaving the RAF Beaulieu runways.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PcYPJCvOq4
This horrendous death toll not only highlights the horrors of war but also underscores the cosmopolitan nature of the men who flew from the local airfields. August 1943 was a sombre chapter in RAF Beaulieu’s history and offers a poignant reminder of the immense cost of freedom.
Because of this, I believe it’s important we don’t forget these men. To honour their memory, I’ve published a series of short films on YouTube that document their stories and list their names for posterity.