Avro Lancaster bomber makes sentimental journey to U.K.
Second World War Avro Lancaster carries ashes of Mary Etheridge, wife of chief engineer on plane’s restoration in the 1980s.
By: Zoe McKnight Staff Reporter, Published on Sat Aug 23 2014
Mary Etheridge would have hated the final trip she’d ever make.
Reluctant to board even a commercial jet, the ashes of Mary, who died in March, have been flown via a restored Avro Lancaster Second World War bomber to the U.K., where they’ll be scattered by her son this week.
Her husband, Norman Etheridge, now 87, was the chief engineer on the restoration project during the 1980s. The couple raised their family in the Toronto area but met in Wales, and some of Mary’s remains will be spread on the golf course outside the town of Maesteg where she and Etheridge took a long walk on what turned out to be their first date.
They were married 66 years before she died of cancer at 89.
Etheridge’s apartment at Birkdale Place retirement home is covered in images of his two great loves: his wife and his planes. He sits in his easy chair under a colour photo of the Lancaster’s first flight after the five-and-a-half-year restoration project was complete in 1988.
In the photo, Etheridge’s face peers out the side window of the plane. Mary also attended the takeoff, but stayed on the ground.
Etheridge has a message for the pilot, Leon Evans: “Thank you for giving Mary her first flight in the Lancaster.”
The Lancaster — known affectionately as the “Lanc” — was famously used by the British air force during nighttime raids. At one time thousands took to the skies, though they weren’t built to last. Of the 7,377 built, only two airworthy planes remain — one at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, and the other, which belongs to the Royal Air Force, housed at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, England.
Their cross-Atlantic reunion, which began Aug. 8 and will last two months, has already been witnessed by thousands of people in the U.K. When it took flight from Hamilton, 82 veterans including Etheridge were on hand to witness it. Etheridge’s son Philip flies out Tuesday to meet the crew.
The eldest Etheridge grew up near the Croyden Airport, south of London, and loved to watch the planes deliver a who’s who of Europe. He joined the Navy as an artificer in 1943, at 15 years old, just so he could work with planes.
And when he met Mary, who was pen pals with his brother, “that was it,” he said. They met in 1947, married in 1948 and arrived in Canada in 1957.
Etheridge’s postwar job as an aircraft maintenance engineer for an aerial mapping and survey company took him all over the world, sometimes for months at a time. His wife stayed home and raised two children, a daughter also named Mary, and Philip, who eventually followed in his father’s footsteps.
The Lancaster was one of the most visible symbols of the European bombing campaigns during wartime and the aircraft still resonates today, Philip said. Even the royal family sent the Etheridge family a letter of best wishes on Buckingham Palace letterhead.
“It’s a very sentimental airplane to a lot of people because the Bomber Command was such a big deal in the U.K. During the day the Americans flew daylight missions with (Boeing) B-17s and the British flew Lancasters at night,” Philip said.
“The losses were huge. The airplanes were only designed to last about 350 hours because they figured they’d be shot down by then.”
By Thursday, the Lancaster will be in Middleton St. George, the site of a former RAF Bomber Command and a memorial to Winnipeg-born gunner Andrew Mynarski.
Mynarski was posted to a seven-man squadron that was part of the Canadian arm of the RAF Bomber Command and flew out of Middleton St George. During a 1944 mission to bomb a German supply line in France, the Lancaster they were flying was fired on by a German fighter plane. After the pilot ordered the crew to bail out, Mynarski stayed back, even though his parachute and clothing had caught fire, to help tail gunner Pat Brophy, who was trapped in the turret.
Brophy and the others survived; Mynarski did not. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
A Robert Taylor painting that hangs in Etheridge’s apartment and once hung in the family home is signed by the surviving crew members, some of whom were still around to attend the Lancaster’s first post-restoration flight in 1988.
This week the hangar at Middleton St. George will be draped in Canadian flags for the hero and, after a wreath is placed around the neck of the Andy Mynarski statue, Philip will scatter half of his mom’s ashes.
Mary wasn’t connected to Mynarski, but she was connected to the Lancaster.
“Mom was very much involved, directly and indirectly, in the restoration,” Philip said. She helped raise money for the effort, but her main contribution was supporting her husband through the arduous process — it took four months just to remove a set of bolts.
“Mom would cheer him up, re-energize him and get him to go back out the door the next day,” Philip said. “That was a significant help to keep dad going.”
Norman Etheridge is recovering from a hip replacement and isn’t well enough to make the journey overseas. He’s been watching some of the coverage on television, surrounded by photos of his wife and family. Once Philip leaves the crowds of Middleton St. George, he’ll take a much quieter journey, just him and his mother for the last time.
Posted in the Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08 ... to_uk.html
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