AN 88-YEAR-OLD veteran with blood cancer trekked 11 miles to the site in York where a where a Halifax bomber crashed in the Second World War.

At the weekend former paratrooper Jeffrey Long made the journey on foot from RAF Linton-on-Ouse to Nunthorpe Grove, the street in York where the aircraft crashed in 1945, killing 11 people.

Susan Major, from Clements Hall Local History Group, said: "We were delighted to welcome Mr Long who is a veteran charity fund-raiser and has MBE, on his trek to lay a wooden cross at the site in Nunthorpe Grove where the Halifax crashed.

"The 11-mile walk was part of a series of walks he is doing, totalling 100 miles in all, to raise money for the RAF Benevolent Fund and the RNLI."

The aircraft was among a group of bombers from RAF Linton-on-Ouse which took off on a mission to raid the German city of Chemnitz.

But the craft were covered in ice and three crashed soon after take-off, including the one that came down in Nunthorpe Grove.

Mr Long, from Bingley, began fundraising 11 years ago and has previously walked 650 miles from London to Lausanne in Switzerland wearing a 30kg backpack, as well as completing the Three Peaks Challenge.

Nunthorpe Grove has been described as the most ill-fated street in wartime York.

On April 29, 1942 a bomb dropped on numbers 23 and 25, destroying both houses, as well as numbers 19 and 21. Several people were badly injured, and the body of a young ATS girl, Dorothy Thompson, was later found at the bottom of a bomb crater in number 21.

The houses were eventually rebuilt in 1946. Further bombs landed on other parts of the estate, between the houses. In another devastating incident, on March 5 1945, a Halifax bomber from the Canadian 426 Squadron at Linton-on-Ouse took off for a raid on the German city of Chemnitz. These aircraft suffered from severe icing and three crashed soon after take-off. One broke up under the weight of ice which had accumulated on it, and its fuselage crashed on numbers 26 and 28 Nunthorpe Grove, killing two elderly women, while one of the engines hit the nearby school. The aeroplane was carrying eight bombs. Eleven people died in total. Six of the crew and five civilians - and another 18 were injured in the crash. Four houses were set on fire.