WW2 hero pilot honoured by town he avoided in crash
Lt Arthur Brown will be given the freedom of Nantwich on Sunday A World War Two airman is to be posthumously granted the freedom of a Cheshire town, 80 years after he narrowly missed houses as he crashed. Lt Arthur Brown, a 23-year-old US Army Air Force pilot, came down behind Shrewbridge Road in Nantwich.
His body was never found after the crash but he is to be remembered with a memorial close to where his plane came to rest. His family are due to fly in from the US for the ceremony on Sunday to confer the honour on him.
Gillian Bolton, then a young girl, was at school when the crash happened and remembers how local residents reacted. “Everywhere you went in town over that weekend, the talk was all about the plane crash,” she said. Ms Bolton explained the sound of aircraft overhead was not unusual during the war, but the noise from Lt Brown’s Thunderbolt P47D was so loud it brought many people outside to see what was going on.
Her mother told her the plane had been flying dangerously low, and that it soon became apparent it was going to crash. “We had listened to mother in horrified silence,” she said. “The war had never felt so close.”
Ms Bolton and the St Mary’s Church Brownie group would later tend to the airman’s memorial, put in place after the crash. Lt Brown’s award of the freedom of the town is the first to be handed out in Nantwich, and is the highest honour the town council can bestow. A spokesperson for the town council said: “It is testament to his act of such bravery that his story continues to live on.
“The young American pilot’s fate has become interwoven with the town’s history.”
A service will take place from 10:45 GMT on Sunday at St Mary’s Church, followed by a procession led by the Cheshire Constabulary Police Band before a short ceremony takes place at the site of the memorial behind Shrewbridge Road.