PILOTS were given a safety alert after two planes collided in mid-air over Oxfordshire during the Second World War.
As we recalled (Memory Lane, September 21), the collision, near Chipping Norton, of Wellington and Oxford aircraft while on night training exercises in August 1942 killed all eight men on board.
John Wilson, of York Road, Headington, Oxford, who keeps records of air incidents, tells me that the court of inquiry into the crash urged crews to be specially vigilant in crowded night skies.
The Wellington, with a crew of six, which had taken off from RAF Harwell, crashed at Colts Farm, Over Norton, while wreckage from the Oxford was reportedly recovered from Jewdell House, in Church Street, Chipping Norton.
One of the two men killed in the Airspeed Oxford was Sergeant Pilot Stanley Edmund Downs.
His family have posted a tribute to him on the VacantChair.co.uk website, which commemorates military personnel who have given their lives.
A plaque in Church Street, Chipping Norton, honours the airmen.
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