The Belle of Liberty: The True Story Behind a Moment in Just Jane
There are moments in Just Jane that are entirely fictional. And then there are moments that really happened.
When I began writing Jane and Bill's story, I wanted the world around them to be as real as possible. RAF East Kirkby wasn't simply somewhere for me to place two fictional characters. It had been home to real airmen and women, real Lancasters had departed from its runways, and real tragedies had unfolded there.
One of those tragedies happened on 30th December 1944, when an American B-17 Flying Fortress called the Belle of Liberty attempted to land at East Kirkby.
It is an incident that found its way into Just Jane.
But the real story is far more devastating than the brief moment that appears in the novel.
Belle of Liberty
The aircraft was B-17G Flying Fortress 42-97479, coded UX-L and named Belle of Liberty. It belonged to the 327th Bombardment Squadron, 92nd Bomb Group of the United States Army Air Forces and was normally based at RAF Podington in Northamptonshire. (American Air Museum)
On 30th December 1944, the 92nd Bomb Group was involved in an operation against the railway bridge at Bullay, on the Moselle in Germany.
The target mattered. The Battle of the Bulge was still raging, and attacks against rail links were intended to disrupt the movement of German troops and supplies.
But Belle of Liberty developed engine trouble.
Rather than continuing normally with the operation, the crew found themselves needing somewhere to land.
And that brought them to Lincolnshire. To RAF East Kirkby. An unfamiliar airfield in poor visibility
By the time Belle of Liberty reached East Kirkby, conditions were poor.
The B-17 was flying with an engine out, the crew were approaching an unfamiliar RAF airfield, and visibility was bad.
They attempted to land. They didn't make it.
The aircraft overshot the runway and had to go around for another attempt. According to accounts of the accident, another propeller was then windmilling, further compromising the B-17's ability to maintain height.
The crew were now trying to bring a stricken four-engined bomber around for another approach to East Kirkby.
North of the airfield lay rising ground.
As the pilot tried to gain enough height to clear it, the Belle of Liberty stalled.
The B-17 came down approximately two miles north of RAF East Kirkby, between the small communities of Old Bolingbroke and Hareby.
It burned after crashing.
All nine men aboard were killed.
They had come extraordinarily close to safety.
Their names are now recorded close to the place where their aircraft came down:
2nd Lt Joseph Van Stratton — Pilot
2nd Lt Edward Porter Jr — Co-pilot
2nd Lt John Cowan — Navigator
Sgt Charles Chambers — Bombardier
Sgt Arthur Estrada — Radio Operator
Sgt Thomas Standish — Top Turret Gunner
Sgt Wilfred Bedard — Waist Gunner
Sgt Harold Barner — Ball Turret Gunner
Sgt William White — Tail Gunner
The historical record can reduce a tragedy like this to a few words: aircraft number, unit, location, nine killed.
But those nine names are the real story. They were nine men who had climbed aboard an aircraft that morning expecting, or at least hoping, to climb out of it again.
Instead, their final flight ended in a Lincolnshire field.
Why it appears in Just Jane
This was exactly the sort of real event I wanted to weave quietly through Just Jane.
Jane and Bill are fictional, but their world isn't.
I didn't want the war simply to happen somewhere beyond them. If you were living and working on a bomber station, it was all around you. You saw aircraft leave. You listened for them returning. You noticed an empty place at breakfast. You heard news passed from one person to another.
The Belle of Liberty wasn't one of East Kirkby's aircraft. Its crew weren't RAF Bomber Command.
They were Americans from another airfield.
But when that crippled B-17 appeared over East Kirkby looking for somewhere to land, none of that would have mattered.
Those watching from below would have understood exactly what they were seeing: a bomber in trouble and a crew desperately trying to get home.
Knowing what happened next allowed me to place a real moment of East Kirkby's wartime history into Jane and Bill's fictional lives.
Seeing the memorial
And then, long after writing about it, I found myself standing beside the memorial.
That was different.
Researching something on a screen or reading about an aircraft loss in a book creates a certain distance. You know it happened, but decades separate you from it.
Standing where it happened removes some of that distance.
The memorial is simple. A black plaque bears the outline of a B-17 and the names of the nine men.
And underneath them are five words:
Lost but not forgotten.
I think that sentence captures much of what draws me to Bomber Command history — and ultimately why I wrote Just Jane.
Historical fiction inevitably invents people, conversations and emotions. But behind those fictional stories are thousands upon thousands of real ones.
Real crews. Real families waiting for news.
And real aircraft that sometimes came heartbreakingly close to home.
On 30th December 1944, Belle of Liberty almost reached the safety of RAF East Kirkby.
More than eighty years later, nine names in the Lincolnshire countryside make sure that her crew are still remembered.
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