Short Stirling Air Disaster: Five people who died in aircraft tragedy 'will never be forgotten'

An unremarkable field off the A608 in Annesley is the site of a tragic and relatively unknown piece of history

Today, where the cars drive by to and from work, very few people pay a second thought to fields that line the busy A-road junction in Annesley. The farmland is just that to most - a flat, unremarkable landscape of grass and trees.

But just a stone's throw from the throng of heavy traffic, where the A611 Derby Road and the A608 Mansfield Road converge in the Nottinghamshire village, lies a monument. The five men honoured within it are just names to most who know about it, and invisible figment of history to those who don't.

On January 14, 1945, just months before World War II was about to end, the five men - aged 22 on average - perished in an air crash, just metres from a roundabout thousands pass every day in complete oblivion. With no photographic records, the horrifying details of the aftermath of the crash have been spared from historical documentation.

In all likelihood, it consisted of fire, shouts, screams, sirens and raging flames. Now, that same patch of grass is just quiet, apart from the drumming murmur of vehicles whittling by.

But through the power of the spoken word and through anecdotes passed down over generations, a minority of people vow to keep the memory of the five men alive.

Lieutenant Stephen Cockbain and Sergeants John Littlemore, Kenneth Harris, Terence Ball and Edwin Barton, pilots of bombers and trainees of varying experience during the war, had set off on a routine flight from RAF Winthorpe - now Newark Showground - to Northern Ireland at 10am on that day.

The chilly winter morning was not perfect for flying but it was adequate and not dangerous. The Met Office weather report for the day reports winds of around 23mph, total cloud cover and a temperature of around 1C.

But the crew's fate was but written upon their ascent into the skies above Nottinghamshire. An engine blew and power began to be lost.

The Short Stirling EH988 ran on four engines like many of the aircraft of the time. The nearest landing strip was at RAF Hucknall, and captain Cockbain headed toward it.

But then a second engine gave out, and the crew's chances of a safe landing were slim. Smoke began to billow from the outer engine on the right hand side of the plane.

An eye-witness said he saw the Stirling on fire; by that point, there both engines may have been aflame. As the craft drifted closer and closer to the ground, Cockbain turned right over Newstead and Annesley School.

The aircraft was so low that it scraped the roof of a cottage at Home Farm. It is a theory that Cockbain may have hoped to land in the clear grass area just beyond the farm, now occupied by Sherwood Business Park.

But the Stirling careered into the ground. It smashed into trees and ploughed a deep furrow in the earth before it came to a stop with its nose buried in the soil.

None of the five men - Cockbain, 28, Littlemore, 19, Harris, 22, Ball, 20 or Barton, 21, survived. Witnesses reported the tail of the plane being the only recognisable feature from the wreckage.

In 1996, a local historian, Brian Walker, suggested that a memorial garden be built in memory of the tragedy 50 years earlier, and soon after, two members of the local Royal Air Force Association (RAFA) took up the idea and presented it to Ashfield District Council. The memorial garden, with a headstone and plaque, opened in 1998.

The RAFA members, Malcolm and Rose Bryan, later wrote a book about the air disaster, entitled Passage to Destruction. It was there that the lives of the five young men who succumbed to the disaster in the most tragic circumstances were detailed for the first time.

Squad leader Stephen Legh Cockbain was born in Dorset in 1916 and enlisted in the air force in 1940, completing 19 bombing operations in the course of the war, inlcuding three over Cologne. He had survived being shot at during more than one air raid, and two previous crash landings.

His third was to prove his last. Sgt John Littlemore, 19, was from Manchester and joined the Air Force in 1942.

He had volunteered for the fateful journey as the wireless operator. He was the youngest of the victims and is buried in Manchester's South Cemetery.

Sgt Kenneth Harris, born in 1922, had also volunteered for the flight, with the reason why being open to conjecture. He was an apprentice bricklayer before joining the airforce, and his brother had been captured by Germans and was a prisoner of war.

Flight Sgt Terence Ball was born in London in 1924 and his father fought in World War I and he had himself flown in 24 bombing operations over the course of World War I. He was survived by his mother and father, who were later buried with him at Plumstead Cemetery in Woolwich.

And Flight Sgt Edwin Barton, born in 1923, loved sport, fishing and dancing. He was buried in Bristol, where he had been born.

If the five men on board the flight had made it to 2024, they'd be between 98 and 108 now. Instead, they're immortalised on a headstone - and hopefully, will never be forgotten.