THE Queen has been invited to unveil a memorial at York Minster to honour French airmen who died flying from a York airbase during the Second World War.

The memorial, which will be unveiled on October 20 next year, will remember the French airmen who died in action while flying from Elvington, near York.

It will be the first French war memorial in an English cathedral.

An invitation has also been sent to the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to attend the event, which is expected to attract about 1,000 people including officials from other allied nations.

Ian Reed, Yorkshire Air Museum director, who is coordinating the event, said: “This momentous ceremony is likely to be attended by heads of state as a testimony to the bravery and self sacrifice of the French air crews within RAF Bomber Command.

“There were more than 2,000 French airmen stationed at Elvington during 1944/5 and they made an enormous contribution to the war when it mattered, when Britain was under threat. Some of their first missions were to bomb their own country in preparations for the D-Day landings, before their almost daily involvement in the deadly missions into the Ruhr and Berlin.”

As reported in The Press, yesterday marked the 66th anniversary of an Anglo-French attack on Germany during the Second World War.

Five Halifax aircraft and 35 French airmen stationed at Elvington were lost flying alongside the RAF in the Bochum Raid.