Continued ....

This aircraft flew 12 missions, the last being in January 1942 when it was one of a group of bombers looking for the Tirpitz near Trondheim in Norway. During this time the N6086 was transferred to Lossimouth in Scotland to find the German battleship Tirpitz. Despite several attempts the poor weather soon forced the abondonment of this operation, and the aircraft of 15 Sqn were ordered back to Wyton on 6 February.

The aircraft began taking off from Lossiemouth as scheduled for the return journey, but it soon became apparent that the weather would yet again hamper their efforts, and all but one of the aircraft had to divert to nearby Peterhead following icing on the wings. The next morning on take-off to return to RAF Wyton, N6086 clipped a snowbank on the side of the runway and veered violently to port. It ran right off the runway and crashed into a Spitfire that was in dispersal nearby. (Picture). All the stirling's crew escaped uninjured, but for Sgt 'Duncan' Jeffs this crash was to be the first of two that he would survive in a MacRobert's Reply stirling (*).

Pictures courtesy of Carl Vincent

(*My father - Wireless Operator Sgt Jeffs - was later to fly in W7531 which would be the second MacRobert's Reply, and he would become the sole survivor of the crash that killed the rest of the crew in Denmark.)

The N6086 was severely damaged and had to be transported back to Cambridge on a low-loader. Unfortunately although instructions had been given to remove all reference to the MacRobert's family, only the crest was painted over. This meant that during its long journey of several hundred miles back to RAF Wyton, all those seeing a wrecked fuselage of a stirling bomber also saw the name 'MacRobert's Reply' still emblazoned on its nose. A sad end to a famous airplane; the N6086 MacRobert's Reply never flew in combat again, although it was later used in training.

(Pictures of N6086)