On Tuesday the 8th October 1940 a Handley Page Hampden 1 aircraft of 16 Officer Training Unit, 7 Group Bomber Command crashed at Home Farm, Highnam, killing everyone on board.
Coming from Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, the plane carried four crew:
Pilot Officer Frederick Jeffreys (aged 28)
Sergeant Joseph Edmund Shiels (aged 27)
Sergeant Richard Thomas Bowtell (aged 22)
Sergeant Ralph Alexander Keeling (aged 22)
Sergeant Bowtell and Sergeant Keeling were wireless operators and air gunners. Bowtell was from Birmingham while Keeling was from Manitoba in Canada. They are both buried in Gloucester Old Cemetery.
The plane passed low over the church and school, and crashed on the hill near the Pinetum.
The troubled plane was witnessed by children from Highnam School which is referred to in the following account taken from “Highnam School – A history 1850 to 1981”
“Having first refused, Miss Jones (the Head Teacher) relented and granted permission to the children to go and see the wreckage. Although Miss Jones had told the children to keep with her, the older and bolder ones ran on, so that the party stretched out between the school and their destination. When the first children arrived at the scene it seems, bullets were exploding, and the remains of the four airmen who were killed were scattered about the burning wreckage.
It was reported to the School Managers that the unauthorized expedition had caused the children fear and distress, and Miss Jones was called to account and informed of the Managers’ very strong disapproval”.
There was absolutely no mention of this air crash in the local newspaper – the Gloucestershire Journal. It was full of reports of death resulting from road accidents due to the blackout, and it reported on air crashes whenever a German plane was involved. Perhaps it was inevitable at that time, that where a British plane was involved in a crash, the bad news would have been censured.
Nor was the incident involving the school children visiting the scene of the crash mentioned in the School Log Book.
