DURING the Manchester Blitz many hundreds of Mancunians sought refuge in Sale - staying with relatives or friends, taking rooms, or even sleeping in their cars.

But Sale itself wasn’t entirely safe. On the night of December 23, 1940 600 incendiaries fell on the town in just 3 hours. Incredibly there were no casualties, although the Town Hall was left minus its roof and gutted by fire.

By 1943 air raids had become sporadic and people began to relax, but Sale’s most shocking incident of the war was yet to come.

At 11.50pm on August 3, 1943, the residents of Brooklands were woken by the ominous roar of a large plane flying low overhead and feared the worst. Moments later the area was rocked by a huge explosion. As it turned out, it wasn’t a hostile enemy attack but a stricken RAF plane. The Wellington bomber had been on manoeuvres when it suffered a catastrophic engine failure.

The crippled plane was heading directly for homes on Walton Road but the pilot, Flight Sergeant Freddie Mathews, managed to lift it over the rooftops.

The undercarriage snagged the top of a tree and a telegraph pole clipped the chimney stack of 5 and 7 Walton Road and crashed into allotments alongside the Bridgewater Canal in what is now Walton Park.

Two of the crew were thrown clear as the front of the aircraft burst into flames. As residents from nearby houses rushed to the scene ammunition on board the plane exploded. Two members of the six man crew died in the crash, both of them members of the Australian Air Force; Flight Sergeant Freddie Matthews, aged 26, and bomb aimer, Sgt Edward Thompson, aged 21.

Find out more about life in bygone Sale in a fascinating DVD - ‘Sale – The Way We Were’

To order your copy call 0845 313 9463 or visit www.britainonfilm.co.uk Price £15.50. Please add £1.50 post and packing.