Hampden P5392 Crash at Longdown: Missing Unidentified Bodies

At half past midnight on the 15^th of December 1941, four men took off in a Handley Page Hampden twin-engine medium bomber from RAF Balderton, an airfield two miles south of Newark-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire. They were flying with No. 408 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force and were detailed to bomb docks at Cherbourg in France. It would be a 472 mile round trip to France and back from Nottinghamshire, taking place in complete darkness.

Tragically, the four airmen would never return to the airfield, as their Hampden crashed a few hours later in the New Forest. All were killed.

The airmen of Handley Page Hampden, serial P5392, who would die that night, were one of four crews who were briefed early in the evening. The four Hampden bombers of No. 408 (RCAF) Squadron started to taxi onto the RAF Balderton runways at 0030am. Unexpectedly, but perhaps lucky for one of the crews, only three of the aircraft left the airfield, as one was involved in a prang with a stationary aircraft whilst taxiing onto the runways.

A Handley Page Hampden of No. 408 (RCAF) Squadron.

Later that morning, just one of the three Hampdens that left RAF Balderton would return to the airfield at 0438am. In the operational records the single returning crew reported how the weather had been bad and that German targets at Cherbourg were not hit:

“After climbing from the English coast, icing conditions were encountered up to 12,000 feet. Nothing could be seen on ETA owing to 10/10 cloud, so the captain decided to fly to Le Havre as an alternative target. Here conditions appeared to be even worse. Course was then set for Ostende, but as conditions rapidly become worse, the operation was abandoned, and the bomb load of 8 x 250 lb bombs were brought back to base.”

Perhaps this weather accounted for the two Hampdens that didn’t get back to RAF Balderton. Of the two that didn’t return, one of them was lost without trace, so has to be assumed it ditched in the English Channel. The other was Hampden P5392 (EQ-W).

Hampden P5392 did get back to England, but shortly after crossing the coast and flying on a direct route over the New Forest towards Nottinghamshire, it crashed near New Farm on Deerleap Lane, just south east of Longdown and Ashurst. The crash was logged at happening at 0327am. The reason for the crash has never been established.

All four of the crew were all killed:

Sgt Eric William Sterling, pilot, age 29, British.
Sgt John Charles Tomlin, navigator, age 21, Canadian.
Sgt Cyril Charles Gibson, wireless operator, age 20, British.
F/Sgt Wilfred Roy Williams, wireless operator, age 20, British.

The flight had been the first ever operational trip with No. 408 (RCAF) Squadron for Gibson, Sterling, and Tomlin.

A memorial cross I laid down at the grave site in Fawley on the anniversary of the accident in 2024.

When the crash site was reached, Handley Page Hampden P5392 was entirely burnt out, and only three men were retrieved from the wreckage. Just two, Eric Sterling and Cyril Gibson, could be identified, meaning either the body of Wilfred Williams or John Tomlin was never found, or never identified. The operational record book recorded:

“The fourth member of the crew has not yet been recovered but, instructions were issued to RAF Station Calshot by the Air Ministry to have a communal funeral and grave for the four members of the crew. Following this crash, RAF Station Calshot, being the nearest RAF Station to the scene of the crash, took the matter in hand and made all necessary funeral arrangements.”

So, in simple terms, one body was never found, one body was never correctly identified.

The record of also noted how Wilfred Roy Williams’ mother and father, Thomas Henry and Sophie Williams, of Maesteg, Glamorgan wished their son’s remains brought home to Wales.

“The father of Sgt. Williams requested that his son’s body be sent home for burial, but he was advised that the bodies were unidentifiable.”

The records go on to say how the father then contacted RAF Calshot after his request was denied, asking the same question, upon which the station forwarded the body to his residence. However, this line in the operational records has been struck through, so I believe this to be a mistake in the records, hence it being struck through by the author of the record. After all, the body was unidentifiable, so RAF Calshot would not have known whose body they were sending to Wales.

operational records — Note the highlighted area which was struck-through about the request to send Williams’ body home to Wales. Also see how the record has a clear error, stating Longdown was near Christchurch, which isn’t really accurate given there are closer towns to the crash site.

All four men have gravestones set together at All Saints’ Church in Fawley. However, all I can say for certain is that Eric Sterling and Cyril Gibson are in those graves. As the operational records state, one body was never recovered, and one was unidentifiable, meaning one of either John Tomlin and Wilfred Williams are also buried in the plot, and one of the graves is possibly empty. I assume that four gravestone were put down, as there was no way of knowing whether the third body was Tomlin or Williams.

Historian Richard Reeves tells me that often a box of bricks would be buried to represent a missing airman. Whether this happened in the case Tomlin and Williams, I can’t say.

John Charles Tomlin (pictured) is the only one of the crew I have been able to find a photo of. He was the 20 year old son of Fred and Mary Tomlin, of Toronto, Ontario. Whether Tomlin is one of the bodies buried in All Saints’ Church in Fawley, I don’t think we will ever know.

And, as I am sure you will agree, that is utterly tragic. As all the deaths were. But the fact we don’t know his body is even here, make things even worse in my mind.

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