Local contractor built air crash monument
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The Celtic cross at Eagle’s Rock which bears the names of those who died.
SIR – May I, through your columns, thank Bert Gunn who contacted me after my article, “Mystery still surrounds eagle’s rock air crash”, appeared in last week’s Caithness Courier.
I visited Mr Gunn at his home in Bayview House, Thurso, to hear his account of how his father’s business of John Gunn & Sons, civil engineering contractors, had been commissioned by the ministry of works, back in 1946, to construct two monuments at the crash site. One was to honour the dead crew of Flight W – 4026, the other to mark the spot where the Duke of Kent’s body was found.
As Bert Gunn tells the story: “My father, my brother, Horace, and I examined the ground all the way up from Upper Borgue to the crash site at Eagle’s Rock. We used a length of reinforcing rod to prod the depth of peat to make sure the Fergie could cope [the business had just taken delivery of a new grey Ferguson tractor, one of the first in the area].
“The only bit that worried us was the low area immediately in from of the crash site.
“As we walked along testing, we marked the route we chose with sticks that would help us find our way when the weather closed in. Just in case, we also always carried a compass!
“We made many journeys in with the materials for the monuments as we could only carry a little at a time because of the ground conditions. We completed the monument to the crew, but the stone slab that was to be put on top of the other base never arrived so we were unable to finish it.”
It’s been a few years since I last visited Eagle’s Rock but I see from the coverage the Courier gave the article that you included a photograph of a relatively recently installed plaque on the hillside in tribute to the duke who was killed along with 14 crew members on that ill-fated flight on August 25, 1942.
From your photograph it appears to bear the motto, hic mortuus est – here he died.
Dan Mackay,
2 Royal Bank House,
Victoria Place,
Wick.
