On February 27 1943 two young airmen lost their lives when a Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bomber crashed into a farm field at Gask Farm near Letham in Angus, Scotland.

One of the airmen was Sub Lieut Arnold Waterhouse, a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve from Shipley, and his colleague Sub Lieut Brian R. Honeybun came from Middlesex.

The two young trainees, both aged 21, belonged to the Fleet Air Arm based at HMS Condor, Arbroath. They were taking part in an instruments training run when the plane suffered mechanical problems.

The bodies of the men were transported to their home towns where they are buried. Sub Lieut Waterhouse’s grave is in Nab Wood Cemetery.

Former police sergeant Patrick Anderson, who served in Shipley in 1985 and now lives in his home town of Arbroath, researched the incident, which was subsequently reported in the T&A and the Arbroath Herald.

He says: “I met an elderly woman who recalled seeing the Swordfish come down over a farmworker’s house where her parents lived and crash land at the neighbouring farm.”

In 2014 he received a phone call from Andrew Waterhouse, nephew of Arnold Waterhouse, who told him that his late grandparents – the pilot’s parents - from Shipley had previously erected a wood-based memorial at the crash site bearing a brass plaque.

The family had not visited the crash site since the 1970s and in that time

The memorial had fallen apart.

Patrick liaised with Dave Lumgair, the farmer of Gask Farm, who was a baby in 1943. He was in favour of Mr Waterhouse erecting a new, stone memorial at the crash site in memory of his uncle and his colleague.

“The farmer asked volunteers to comb the field with a metal detector and they found the bronze plaque that was on the memorial in the field. It was in very good condition, just like new.”

This was retrieved and fixed onto the new memorial.

This was unveiled last November and reads: ‘In proud memory of Sub. Lieut. (A) Arnold Waterhouse RNVR and Sub.Lieut. (A) Brian Honeybun RNVR who whilst on a training flight from Arbroath Naval Station on 27 February 1943 at a point 30 yards due south of this tree gave their lives in defence of liberty. Duty nobly done.’

“It is a fine memorial and there was a lovely ceremony when we unveiled it,” says Patrick, who wanted to update T&A readers as to what had a happened. “It was a glorious day and a nice result to my research,” says Patrick.

He is carrying out further research into military history, having in the past succeeded in having the names of three servicemen added to the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle. One was his uncle Patrick Wright Anderson who served in the First World War and died in 1921 from wounds. He was born in Arbroath in 1892, the son of Patrick Wright Anderson, an accountant in a lawyer’s firm in the town. His name was added to The Black Watch roll of honour.