Bourn village sign
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Bourn village sign by Adrian S Pye as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Bourn village sign
Image: © Adrian S Pye Taken: 4 Jun 2020
The only reference to the fact that in the Second World War there was an airfield at Bourn is the illustration of a Lancaster bomber on the village sign. It was constructed for RAF Bomber Command in 1940 as a satellite airfield for nearby RAF Oakington. The Lancaster featured on the sign is 97 Sqdn Lancaster JB659 OF-J. On 30/01/1944 it had departed Bourn for a raid on Berlin, but was intercepted by a German night-fighter captained by Nacht-Jagd “Experten” Maj Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer and shot down. The aircraft crashed onto a farmhouse on the border of Amsterdam killing not only the crew of seven but six members of the Van der Bijl family in the farmhouse.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
52.191832
Longitude
-0.0639