Sydney's Story.
Sydney Brookes was from Burtons Green, Essex, born to parents J.H and Mary and received a commission to P/O on probation (emergency) on 18th July 1943 and rose to F/O on 18th January 1944. He had flown with 172 Squadron and 179 Squadron before posting to 1674 Coastal Command HCU to convert to flying four engined aircraft after flying in twin engined Wellingtons . He had only 3.5 hours flying time at night in the Halifax type when the accident occurred. In total he had flown 704 hours solo in all types and had flown 106 hours at night in all types of aircraft. He was reasonably experienced in flying at night but not in the Halifax type.The Accident
On the evening of 11th April 1944 Halifax BB310 took off from Longtown airfield near Carlisle at 17.05hrs with a crew of nine for a night cross-country training flight as part of their training programme with 1674 Heavy Conversion Unit. In the early hours of the 12th April 1944 they were on the return leg of the flight and flying in from the north-west coast of England when the aircraft overshot their airfield completely due to low cloud, the aircraft then flew towards the high ground area of the Pennine chain of hills. While flying in cloud and in reasonably level flight the aircraft struck the ground below the peak of Little Dun Fell, to the north of Appleby, at 01.37hrs with the loss of all on board
Sydney was buried at Blacon Cemetery and is memorialised on the Greenstead war memorial in Essex.
Accident Report 1
Accident Report 2
Accident Report 3
Accident Report 4
Plaque near crash site
Crash Site
Greenstead War Memorial