In an exclusive half hour TV programme, Shots! TV looks back at one of Lancashire’s biggest historic tragedies, when an American bomber plane crashed into an infant school during a freak storm, on August 23, 1944. Where can I watch the Freckleton Air Disaster documentary? Watch Freckleton Air Disaster: 80 Years On - The Documentary on Shots! TV . The documentary will also be aired on Shots! TV on Sunday 22nd September 2023 at 8PM (GMT).
Watch on Freeview channel 262 and Freely channel 565. ‘It all went very dark’ 80 years on from the disaster, Lucinda Herbert meets with the two only remaining survivors from the infant school - Ruby Currell and David Madden, who remember the incident with shocking detail. Both now in their 80’s, the pair recall the moments when ‘it all went very dark’ and ‘very noisy’.
..but reflect on the reasons they think they may have survived the terrible incident.
Boy ran through flaming doorway “I just wanted to go outside, so I ran,” recalls Mr Madden, who had to run through a flaming doorway to leave the burning building. Meanwhile, Mrs Currell explains that she ‘hid under a desk’, until she was rescued. Collective heartache Angela Procter wasn’t born when tragedy struck the village, yet she tells Shots! TV why it has always been firmly in her thoughts.
Among the victims was Georgina Lonsdale, the four-year-old elder sister Angela never knew. Angela was born early in 1945, but the tale of the sister she lost and the lasting ma.