Pilot Officer William McMullen’s plane was well ablaze and his six crewmates were baling out as, losing height, the stricken aircraft was heading towards the town centre from the east.
Somewhere near Sadberge, his engineer, Sgt Lew Lewellin, was the last to jump. As he did so, above the roar of the air, the plane, the fire, he bellowed at McMullen in the cockpit that he, too, must prepare to leave.
“No, there’s only me for it,” McMullen shouted back. “There are thousands down below.”
The Echo’s former sister paper, the Northern Despatch, used the famous quote as its headline on January 15, 1945Among those down below was Ian Barnes, famed for his running, who has just turned 90 and must be one of the very last surviving eyewitnesses. He was living in the Eastbourne area of Darlington which the plane passed over as McMullen successfully steered it away from the residential areas and back towards the farmland on the edge of town.
Ian Barnes, recently turned 90, who saw McMullen’s plane come down (Image: Peter Barron) It just about cleared the rooftops of homes in the Yarm Road area and then, at 8.49pm, fell from the sky into the first field of Lingfield Farm.
“I had just had my tenth birthday,” says Ian, “and we slept at the rear of our house in Carnaby Road.
“We were forever being woken up the bombers as they tried to gain altitude because of their heavy payloads, circling round for a long time and then disappearing on their raids, but one evening we heard this peculiar sound as if something was wrong.
“So my sister and I removed the blackout curtain from the window and we saw this huge explosion and there was a great orange ball of fire and a parachute drifting down near it.”
As it crashed, the plane cartwheeled 150 yards across the soil, losing various bits of flaming fuselage as it went, its fuel tanks exploding vividly and its bullets dancing like firecrackers into a Dutch barn, which caught fire immediately and blazed brightly, illuminating the parachutes of McMullen’s colleagues as they drifted slowly down to safety – just as Ian remembers seeing.
McMullen, 33, was dead, killed on impact. He’d been catapulted, still strapped to his seat, 120 yards out of the windscreen, but his flying boots were found later in the aircraft, still attached to the rubber pedals in the cockpit where he had remained in those dying seconds.
Even before his final words were released to the media in a clever piece of PR, the people of Darlington were convinced that instead of jumping to safety, he had chosen to stay with his plane in a bid to steer it away from the houses. With his identity initially unknown, they nicknamed him “the gallant airman” and they began collecting money in his memory – it eventually paid for a cot in the Darlington Memorial Hospital and a plaque telling of “the gallant airman” can still be seen at the entrance to the memorial hall.
The Gallant Airman plaque in Darlington Memorial HospitalThe official Rolls Royce report into the accident said that a mechanical fault in a piston had caused the initial fire, and it “noted that the pilot retained control of the aircraft sufficiently long enough to avoid crashing into the built-up area of Darlington”.
If he had been on an operational mission, rather than a training exercise, McMullen would have been put forward for a high level bravery award, but as this was a training exercise, he was not acknowledged officially at the time.
In 1944, the mayor of Darlington, Cllr Jimmy Blumer, wrote to his widow, Thelma – the mother of his five-year-old daughter, Donna Mae – in British Columbia: “For sheer self-sacrificing heroism, your husband’s action will be remembered and honoured by the people of Darlington for years to come.”
A previous memorial ceremony held at the exact moment McMullen made his decision to sacrifice his own life to save those down belowOn Monday at 8.30pm, at the memorial on McMullen Road people will gather to remember and honour that heroism made in the black nightskies all those years ago, culminating at 8.49pm, the moment of impact, with a minute’s silence. Everyone is welcome to attend.
For the 80th anniversary, Darlington council and Darlington Cares have spruced up the memorial to help McMullen’s amazing story live on for future generations.
READ THE FULL McMULLEN STORY HERE