With kind permission from Eddy Queen Air Load Master 36 Squadron
Good Morning John,
Firstly I have no idea whether this will reach you but here goes. My name is Eddy Queen and as I advance into my reclining years I have been revisiting some of the events in my life which continue to engage my thoughts to this day. One of those events was the TG 577 crash.
I was an ALM on No 36 Sqn at RAF Colerne. On the morning of 5 Jul 1965, a Monday morning as I recall, I arrived on the squadron and was informed that our crew, with Fg Off Jeff Wiles as our captain were required to go over to Abingdon to carry out trainee para dropping sorties. We were "crewed-up" in those days with a regular crew complement, an arrangement which I always welcomed. The case against it was that familiarity bred contempt and led to dangerous familiarity; the example quoted was the Thorney Island Hastings which had a permanent crew on board with a stand-in air engineer. They were doing "circuits and bumps", on touch down Captain called "cut 3" engineer cut 3 engines instead of No. 3 - aircraft careered off the runway into a radio shack killing a ground crew airman! Anyway the duty Bomber Command Standby crew normally positioned for the week at Abingdon for the trainee para support drops. They had been called out over the week end and we were slotted in. So we took-off at 09 25 in TG 577, a 36 Sqn aircraft that I had flown in many times before. The time at Abingdon Parachute Training School was always chaotic: load trainees, 20 mins to the drop zone, get them out, 20 mins back preparing back end for next sortie. We only did two drops, the last being at 16 30 because the wind was out of limits after that. As it was the final drop of the day the jump instructors jumped out after their trainees. I had left the dispatching to the guys at the back, their trainees were comfortable with them in control. Actually I recall going down into the nose position under the crew compartment floor and looking up at the flying control cables and realising that they were bicycle chains connected from the upper column, via a spigot onto the lateral cables running to the rear. As we left the DZ, Jeff Wiles suggested to our signaller that he call up Colerne Tower and see if we could go back and get our night-stopping kit. We assumed we were there for the week and didn't fancy scrounging stuff in our respective Messes. We thought we were on a hiding-to-nothing as no one valued such considerations. However, the Tower came back, the BC Standby crew had just landed, bring TG 577 back and they would take the aircraft off us. We happily did as we were told, I handed my bits over to Pete Timms, who also happened to be our ALM leader on the Squadron. We spent the next day in the Squadron and late in the afternoon we were told not to leave. Finally we were allowed to go home at 17 45 having been told that TG 577 had crashed with no survivors and that we were to say nothing as the families had yet to be informed. I lived in Married Quarters and my wife knew I had been at Abingdon the previous day and would have assumed that as I was late home I was till over there. My immediate concern was that the crash would be announced on the radio on the 6 o'clock news and she would fear the worst. As I walked through the door the announcement was made.
The next few days were awful, we would go to work, have a session on getting our wills in order and sent home. I felt angry, angry that we were adept at handing aircraft emergencies in the air with a chance of survival but no-one prepared us for elevator bolts shearing off, plunging the aircraft into the ground. The information filtered through, after taking the aircraft from us, the crew had bedded down for the night at Abingdon and on the next lift with trainees John Akin, the captain had radioed that he had control problems, requesting an immediate landing on the next runway (which was refused because there was a Beverly transport on a compass swing) but in any event he lost control. The crew were affectionately known as the "casevac" crew (casualty evacuation) because the captain was John Akin, co-pilot was Chris Payne and the Engineer was Jonny Boyles (Aching, pain and boils). The next thing was the funeral, I was coffin-bearer for my colleague Pete Timms. There were other casualties from RAF Colerne who had volunteered to undergo para training and it was a large scale formal military funeral with muffled drums and gun carriages up to the village grave yard. Being 5 foot 9 inches tall I was standard coffin-bearer height and had been engaged in several of these sad events. It was the union jack with the individual's service hat on the coffin that used to upset me. These days with the military various conflicts in progress we are all too familiar with the spectacle but at that time they were thankfully rare events.
As it happened the elevator bolts were replaced and the Hastings (rhapsody in rivets) lived on for a few more years, my final flight was on 11 Aug 1972 at AA&EE Boscombe Down but I along with the rest of Jeff Wile's crew have the last log book entry for TG 577.
I am currently involved as a volunteer with the Pathfinder museum at Wyton so memories linger on.
