Ian Barnes, 90, was there, and we told last week how he remembered seeing McMullen’s burning Lancaster bomber falling out of the nightsky after the Canadian pilot had steered it away from the houses of the Yarm Road area of Darlington.
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Raymond Bland, also just turned 90, was also there. He grew up in Hargreaves Terrace in the town centre.
Ray Bland at the McMullen memorial on Monday night. Picture: Andy Futers“We were a little gang of boys and our play area was Bank Top station, and we were messing around Pensbury Street when we saw a flash, and we ran like billy-o up Yarm Road,” he said.
“We thought it was just a farm or haystack on fire until we got closer to the end of Yarm Road where the magnitude of different colours and lights in the sky, well, to me, it looked like the end of the world.”
Pilot Officer William McMullenMcMullen, 33, from Toronto, was returning from his first flight, a training exercise, on January 13, 1945, when the bomber caught fire over Acklam on its way home to RAF Middleton St George. His five fellow Canadian crew members safely baled out, between Elton and Sadberge, but McMullen stayed at the controls in a bid to steer the stricken plane away from the built-up areas.
“We had real respect for the Canadian airmen,” says Ray. “We used to go up to the gates at Goosepool and stand there and when they were going on leave to the Oak Tree pub, we’d ask them: ‘have you got any gum, chum?’.”
Geoff Garrett, a mere 86, was unable to attend the memorial this year but as a six-year-old, he was living in Widgeon Road and has clear memories of the enormous orange explosion just a field away from his home.
Widgeon Road is one of a number of waterfowly streets – teal, mallard, heron, flamingo, albatross – that McMullen just cleared before crashing. At least some of the houses were erected in timber during the war for the workers – the “angels” – of the Aycliffe munitions factory to live in.
Twenty years ago, Memories spoke to Anne McNaughton in Brisbane, Australia. She got off a bus in Yarm Road just as the burning bomber came overhead and, she said, it almost seemed to chase her as she ran down Teal Road towards Widgeon Road. She could see the flames streaming out in its slipstream. It was so low, she crouched down as it roared overhead. Then the whole ground shook as it exploded, and in the great glare that engulfed the whole area, she could see the other parachutes drifting down, the faces of the airmen illuminated by the fires.
“May the citizens of Darlington always remember this very brave man,” says Geoff. “If it hadn’t been for him, I may not have been sending this e-mail.”
The restored memorial under the “wolf moon” – the first new moon of January is so called because wolves don’t hibernate and so are likely to be heard howling at it, although not necessarily in County Durham. Picture: David Thompson
THE memorial stone was placed on McMullen Road in 1985 when the 40th anniversary commemorations was attended by McMullen’s daughter, Donna Mae Barber. It replaced one that had been placed in the area shortly after the crash in 1945 but had become lost in overgrowth.
For the 80th anniversary, Darlington Cares, led by Seth Pearson, cleaned up the stone and re-inked the lost wording so that it looked pretty impressive for the ceremony. It was also good to learn that the 450 children of the nearby Heathfield Primary School had had an assembly that morning on the McMullen story – hopefully some of them will be looking after the memorial come the 120th anniversary.
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The 80th anniversary McMullen ceremony. Picture: Andy Futers