Halifax LL554 at Holme on Spalding Moor airfield.
During the evening of 23rd October 1944 this 76 Squadron aircraft was used to fly an operational flight to bomb Essen and took off from Holme on Spalding Moor airfield at 16.22hrs. The crew released their bomb load onto the target area at 19.42hrs from 19,300 feet. On the approach to land at Holme on Spalding Moor airfield the crew lowered the undercarriage but starboard undercarriage did not lock down properly. The fuse on the warning horn that indicated a problem was defective and the pilot and flight engineer appear to have purely listened for the undercarriage warning audible horn as their indication that the was a problem with the undercarriage lowering. As they hear nothing they assumed that it was correctly locked down instead using the other means available to them in the cockpit. On landing at Holme on Spalding Moor airfield 22.10hrs the starboard undercarriage leg collapsed.
Pilot - F/O Devoe Woolf RCAF (J/86900).
Navigator - F/O Ralph Hay Emerson RCAF (J/27577).
Air Bomber - F/O George Floyd RCAF (J/25432).
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - WO Ari Bergthor Clark RCAF (R/122421).
Flight Engineer - Sgt John Shirra Gray RAFVR (905574).
Air Gunner - F/Sgt Kenneth Maurice Mason RCAF (R/200969).
Air Gunner - F/Sgt Oscar Frederick Newton RCAF (R/103037).
Second Pilot - P/O D P Thompson RCAF (J/87612).
On 26th December 1944 the first seven named above were flying in 76 Squadron Halifax MZ740 which failed to return from an operational sortie to St.Vith, Belgium. F/Sgt Mason became a PoW while others were killed.