1941 La Gruta crash site memorial 80th anniversary visit...

 

Sunday 29th was the 80th anniversary of the crash and death of young Australian Royal Austrailian Airforce (RAAF) pilot Anthony La Gruta, G organised a cycle with friends to visit the memorial and pay our respects. We drove up to meet at The Watch Reservoir for the 9 mile cycle across the Lammermuir Hills to Hunt Law. 6 of us made the ride and we were soon under way on gravel roads in light mist and drizzle.

80 years ago the young pilot of Operational Training Unit (OTU) 60, based at East Fortune took off in the early hours from RAF East Fortune here in East Lothian on a routine training flight to do a R/T and D/F exercise in his Boulton Paul Defiant aircraft T4042,  a two seater night flying aircraft that was powered by a V12 Rolls Royce Merlin III engine armed with 4 x Browning .303 machine guns.

In the mist the plane crashed into Hunt Law killing the pilot, the plane wreck buried in the peat was unrecoverable and remains there to this day with his body. He was 23 years old...

His story is just one of many young men who travelled from other Commonwealth Countries to help fight the war and never got as far as that, such a tragic waste of a young life...

We rode up onto the pylon road at Fallago Rig and leaving the bikes walked across the heather on Hunt Law to the Memorial...

Reports say a local Sheperd who heard a loud explosion and seen smoke alerted the Police and an officer was sent from Lauder by motorbike. It is a lonely place up here on a misty damp day...

We soon reached the memorial and we all stood for a while with our own thoughts  on such a tragic thing to happen to a young man in his prime with his whole life ahead of him...

G left a wool poppy stuck in with a tent peg...

The surface wreckage is full of recognisable plane parts, some still with green paint...

Dunlop tyre

Instrument panel

Interestingly  the planes guns were armed despite flown solo with no rear facing gunner and on a training exercise

Sadly plane wrecks like this which are unrecovered with pilots remains and are War Graves are looted by souvenir hunters and is an utter disgrace to take anything from these sites...

G found some pics researching of the memorial when built in the 1960`s

And members of the La Gruta family visited from Australia in the 1990`s

With the visit done we returned across the heather to our bikes...

 

Setting off to descend a track to stop for lunch when there was an unexpected incident and L fell and broke her collarbone having first dislocated her shoulder, G being a Paramedic was on hand luckily and while she sat down she fainted briefly and with G holding her bad arm it put the shoulder back in!, she was ok and we made her comfortable and while 3 stayed with her A and I headed back the 9 miles to get his Landrover to return and pick her up. It was the quickest visit ever I have done at Twin Law cairns as we zoomed by having took shooting tracks to join the Southern Upland Way (SUW) to return to the Reservoir. With A’s bike loaded into my van and my bike in his Landrover to return to here, we had to drive a loop around the hills then having enquired at a farm tracks via a Gamekeepers house took us to the party and L was soon on the way to hospital in the Landrover...

Which meant I had to ride back the 9 miles again! lol!

The pace was a bit slower and warmed up I managed to cycle up a beast of a climb call `The Dod`, Regrouped at the top we rode back stopping for a while up on Twin Cairns Law...

Miles of gravel...

Eventually we were at the Cairns...

Visitor book signed we were soon enjoying the fast descent down to the Reservoir and the cars ...

A delivered L to A&E and she was soon home and resting up, like all accidents it could have been a lot worse, weather could have been cold with no shelter (nearby was a shooting lodge) etc... 

Big thanks to the local farmers who helped out with directions!

We had not seen anyone else out walking or cycling the entire day, but someone else had been at the La Gruta Memorial before us as fresh Sunflowers were left. G mentioned our visit on various social media pages and turns out it was a couple from the Borders who indeed had visited earlier and left the flowers. 

 Despite the later injury it was a good day and a good thing to visit and pay our respects to one of many young men killed in training in WW2...

Lest we forget

Short film visting the La Gruta Memorial...

More soon...