Rebecka Kucera
For decades it has been the sacred site where 12 heroic airmen laid down their lives to save an English village from being destroyed by their doomed bomber.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal the hallowed field in Isleham, Cambridgeshire, is to be ‘desecrated’ – after Energy Secretary Ed Miliband gave the go-ahead to a sprawling 15-mile-long solar farm as part of his Net Zero crusade.
On October 13, 1949, the US Air Force Boeing B-50 Superfortress took off from nearby RAF Lakenheath laden with 16 500lb bombs on a practice flight to Heligoland, Germany.
But a fire broke out shortly after take-off and US pilot George Ingham, 27, faced a horrifying choice – veer the flaming aircraft away from Isleham and sacrifice his and his crew’s lives, or bail out and destroy the village.
Elderly residents remember the stricken bomber missing Isleham by just half a mile and crashing into a large field just outside the village in a ‘terrifying’ explosion that shattered the windows of their primary school.
Mr Miliband approved the solar farm plan just three days after Labour came to power last year.
His controversial move, which will also affect 11 other villages in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, came despite a 2023 Planning Inspectorate report that rejected it as ‘inappropriate’ – in part due to the possibility of human remains still being in the field.
Local residents are furious at the development at the last resting place of the airmen – 11 of whom were American and one British.
Linda Dunbavin, who remembers the plane going down when she was just four, accused Mr Miliband of erasing the memory of the heroic airmen by approving the Sunnica Energy Farm
The 80-year-old, whose two sisters and three cousins were inside the school at the time of the crash, described how she heard an ‘almighty bang’ and said: ‘We drove home and my grandmother was saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, a plane has gone down.”
‘Those soldiers gave their lives to save our village and a whole generation of children. My grandfather went up there and saw bits of hands and feet all over the place. Ed Miliband is desecrating their blood and bones.’
David Brown, 89, was inside the school when the bomber crashed. He said: ‘I’m not pleased about Sunnica building a solar farm over it. It is disrespectful to those men.’
As part of the 2,500-acre Sunnica solar farm, one of dozens planned across Britain’s countryside, huge solar panels will cover the field and surrounding areas.
The only concession made by the developers is that they have promised to leave a square in the field free of panels and will put up a plaque in memory of the airmen.
Last October, a 75th anniversary memorial service was held at St Andrew’s Church in Isleham to commemorate the airmen’s ‘valiant sacrifice’.
A Sunnica spokesman said: ‘We undertook geophysical surveys which accurately confirmed the exact location of the crash impact crater.
‘In recognition of the importance of the crash crater, we have proposed an exclusion zone around it where no development would occur.’
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said in a statement: ‘We respect the significance this field holds for those in Isleham and the memory of those lost in the 1949 USAF crash.
‘We support the developer’s commitment to honour them by creating a protected area around the site.’
Source: Dailymail.co.uk | Read the Full Story…
