A memorial service was held at the Rasgovindpur Airstrip on Friday for the fourteen airmen who had died in a crash there on July 26, 1945. War historian Anil Dhir and locals, including schoolchildren, paid homage to the dead airmen who seem to have been forgotten in history. Wreaths were laid for each of these airmen.
Very few people know that the skies of Odisha had seen the crash of two liberator Bomber aircrafts which had collided against each other and resulted in the death of the airmen. The liberators were the biggest aircraft used in the World War II. On July 26, 1945, two British Royal Air Force B-24 liberator bombers collided at low altitude. The aircrafts were based at the Amarda Road Airfield and were part of a six-plane contingent from the Air Fighting Training Unit engaged in a formation flying exercise.
The Rasgovindpur Airstrip has a short but secret illustrious history. It had the longest runway in Asia, more than 2.5 km. The total runways, taxiways, aprons, etc. were more than 60 km. Today, when one looks at the silent runway lying mostly vacant apart from a few odd cows grazing, one would find it difficult to associate the airport with activities of any kind. Today, no details of the activities that happened here between 1943 and 1945 exist, not even in Government and military records. The station came into existence during the war as a forward airfield against the Japanese conquest of Burma. The large strip served its purpose well as a landing ground for planes and also as a training space for special bombing missions.
The Amarda Road Airstrip, as it was called in war terminology, spreads across an area of nearly 800 acres. Built in the 1940s at a cost of Rs 3 crore, it was eventually abandoned after the war. It was probably named as the Amarda Road Airfield due to the nearby Amarda Road railway station. Anil Dhir researched the crash and was helped in his endeavour by Matthew J Poole from the United States who did extensive research on the crash and produced a comprehensive report. In fact, it was the only detailed source of information.
Anil, through Poole, tried to locate the living relatives of the dead airmen and located nine of the relatives. One is 101-year-old brother of Flight Sergeant Cyril William Geeson, Flight Engineer, who died aged 23 and the other is the daughter of Flight Officer Peter Ettlinger who was the Flight Engineer of the flight and died aged 30. Ettlinger’s daughter was then just ten months old and he had never seen her. She has been researching the crash for the last fifty years. She has made three visits to India but could only visit her father’s grave at the Madras War Cemetery. She did not know about the Amaada Airstrip and the crash site. The relatives of these airmen were very surprised when Dhir contacted them. Most of them had given up hope of knowing any more about the death of their loved ones. Dhir got heartbreaking letters from them. Dhir has requested the Governments of Odisha and West Bengal to erect small memorials for these airmen and the crash site.