1954 Aldbury Valetta accident

By Judith

My dear brother was 22 years old and was one of the Officers killed in the 1954 Valetta plane crash at Tom’s Hill, Aldbury, I have his RAF Flying Log book, the last entry states;

6/1/54  17.15, Valetta ‘F’.Pilot F/S Marshall, Bovingdon (Crash after take-off)

My brother was A.P.O. Eric Casey and he was stationed at,No.2 Air Navigation School,Thorney Island. He had flown to Bovingdon as a member of the RAF Thorney Island Rugby team that had played against RAF Halton earlier that day, in his letter to me a few days earlier he says ‘I hear from the chaps who played last year that they are quite a tough bunch so we should have a very good game’, I do hope he did!

I was fourteen and a half years old at the time and can vividly remember the arrival of the telegram early the next morning informing my parent that their only son was dead.

Eric was born and lived in Swinton, Manchester, until he joined the RAF, I don’t recall where the other casualties came from but obviously they were not all from New Zealand, the only survivor was a young man named Patrick Cliff.

Eric is buried alongside several of the others killed that day in the RAF cemetery at Halton.

This page was added on 20/05/2012.

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  • My mother was a nurse in Hemel Hempstead and treated the sole survivor.

    By Susanne Heim (18/10/2016)
  • I was an apprentice at Halton at that time, we were all marched to the sportsfield to see the match. Little did we know of the terrible outcome. I believe there was one survivor in Hemel Hospital. Did he recover?

    By ron hunt (30/06/2014)