CITY OF BELFAST GUIDED TOURS

A lot of people have asked me to repeat this story of the American bomber which crashed on Belfast's Cavehill in 1944.............

This story starts in Louisville Kentucky in 1933. A young man called Lawrence Dundon met and fell in love with a girl called Ruth, they got married in their local Baptist Church in 1939. Lawrence built them a house which they moved into in the last week of November 1941. On the 7th December 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and America was in the war. Lawrence was drafted and left to do his basic training in Florida in January 1943. Ruth and Larry, as he was known met from time to time when he was on leave but they last saw each other in May 1944 two weeks before Larry left for the war in Europe..

Larry was by this time promoted to Staff Sgt in the U.S. Army Air Corp and he was part of a crew of ten servicemen who undertook to fly a B17 bomber across the Atlantic to a base just outside Belfast. Two weeks after their last meeting on the 1st June 1944, Larry was flying up Belfast Lough in the B17 in heavy, dense fog, there was a blackout in Belfast and they couldn't assess their position. They veered north and crashed into the side of the Cavehill... all ten members of the crew were killed and the flames lit up the blacked out city.

We now fast forward this story fifty years to a cold wet December afternoon on Belfast's Cavehill. A guy called Alan Montgomery, a local postal worker is walking his dog along the site where the B17 crashed. All wreckage had been removed back in 1944 and the area is now overgrown but locals know where exactly the site is. He sees something shining in the ground and as bits of cable etc are still buried he assumed it was an old washer from the aircraft. Alan put it in his pocket as a memento and forgot about it.

A few days later he is looking through his coat and finds the washer, he decides to clean it up and as he is doing so realises it is a wedding band!!!! On closer examination he can read an inscription inside.... Ruth - Larry 1939. Alan puts two and two together and reckons there is a connection with the B17 crash in 1944. He contacts the U.S. Consulate here in Belfast, and through the Freedom of Information Act and the U.S. military establishment he is able to track Ruth to an address in Louisville Kentucky. He writes to her telling his story but receives no reply. He assumes she has either moved or is dead.

Some months later he tells the story to a Belfast newspaper, The Belfast Newsletter, and they are intrigued. They in turn contact the 'Louisville Courier Journal' who discover from relatives Ruth is still alive and it would appear that Alans letter was lost somehow in the post. Both newspapers organised for Alan to visit Louisville. On a Sunday morning in 1994 Ruth was in the same Baptist Church she had married Lawrence when the local Pastor announced Alan Montgomery was in the congregation and wished to talk to Ruth. Alan then told her his story and returned the ring which she gave to Larry back in 1939. The ring had completed the circle.

There is a wee footnote to this story. Ruth did remarry and raise a family, she lived in the same house Larry built for her all her life. Her second husband had died. I dont know if she is still alive but this story has since been made into a film shot here in Belfast. It was directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, starring Pete Postlewaite and Shirley McLaine but it adds a lot of 'literary licence' to what I have just told you. It is called 'The closing of the Ring'. You should be able to get it on DVD.

The bodies of the air crew were buried in a special site here in Belfast and exhumed after the war where they were sent to their respective families in the States. They are still remembered today especially on 1st June each year. You can see photographs of the memorial below.

THE SCENE OF THE CRASH