Veterans dig at WW2 bomber crash site near Arundel Castle

In June 1944, a B-24 Liberator was conducting a bombing raid near Paris when it was severely damaged from anti-aircraft fire.

The crew managed to fly the aircraft back to England but crashed in a farmer’s field less than a mile from Arundel Castle.

Seven airmen bailed but three were killed.

Archaeologists work to recover the remains of an American bomber crew

More than 77 years later, a group of US veterans from American Veterans Archaeological Recovery have teamed up with the University of York to try to recover human remains from the crash site so they can be repatriated to America.

Project leader Stephen Humphreys hopes the mission will bring closure to family members of the deceased.

The former US Air Force captain said the farmer took a deep interest in the crash and was a big part of preserving the site.

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“Our mission is to actually recover the remains of those service members who were lost when this aircraft crashed in 1944, have them identified and hopefully give closure to some families if we can,” he said.

The four-week excavation involves a digger removing piles of soil from a wide trench and depositing it on tarpaulins ready for examination.

Humphreys said while it is a “fairly traumatic crash site”, there will be human material and human remains that survived.

US Air Force photo of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator taken in the 1940s

“And personal effects, a number of items that would have been carried by those airmen at the time, those can help us to pinpoint where in the wreckage we might be able to find those remains,” he said.

“It’s all about making the details of the excavation as precise as we possibly can so that we can be as precise as we need to be in terms of being able to say where those individual finds came from out of the ground while we’re looking for those airmen.”

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The aircraft that crashed was part of the 489th Bomb Group, which flew B-24 Liberators out of RAF Halesworth, Suffolk, for several months in 1944.

The group flew tactical missions in support of ground forces in France, including saturation bombing before the final Allied breakthrough at St Lo in July 1944.

A dig has started at the crash site near Arundel Castle

The dramatic crash was witnessed by a boy who lived at the farm, and who would go on to ensure that the site was preserved over the subsequent decades.

A memorial to the airmen also sits at the edge of the field.