Halifax LK766 at East Moor airfield.
In the evening of the 29th June 1944 this aircraft was taking off for Ops to bomb marshalling yards at Metz but whilst on the climb-out it
suffered a failure of the port inner engine. The crew carried out bomb dumping procedures in the North Sea and returned on three engines to East Moor
where the aircraft landed at 00.22hrs. A swing developed and it left the runway and ended up on its belly.
Cat.A(c)/FB damage was later recorded.
Pilot - F/O A Craig,
Flight Engineer - Sgt F Stock,
Navigator - F/O W Howard,
Bomb Aimer - F/O J Semple,
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - W/O R Forbes,
Air Gunner - Sgt G Walker,
Air Gunner - Sgt T Graham.
F/O Craig completed thirty five operational flights with 432 Squadron before being screened; one as second pilot and the rest as captain between
23rd June and 16th November 1944. This Op detailed was his first as Captain. He and this crew were probably flying Halifax NP689 which sustained
damage in a bad landing at East Moor on 18th September 1944 - detailed on this website.
Halifax LK766 was built to contract ACFT/891 by Fairey at Stockport and was delivered directly to 432 Squadron at East Moor on 16th February
1944. It carried out it's first operational flight on 1st March 1944. In the incident detailed above it suffered Cat.A(c)/FB damage and was repaired on
site. This was to have been its twenty first operational flight. On completion of the repairs it was transferred to 415 Squadron
also based at East Moor where it carried out twenty five operational flights (coded "-V") between 28th July and 9th October 1944.
It returned from a major service as "-Q" and commenced Ops again on 21st November 1944. It completed a further eight before it
was transferred to 187 Squadron at Merryfield for Transport Command duties in February 1945 and was used for troop movements but the unit converted to
Dakota's before duties commenced. It then went into MU store in April 1945 and was struck off charge as "reduced to produce" on 11th May 1945 and broken up.