A memorial is to be placed near the graves of the aircrew of a plane which crashed on the slopes of Ben More in Assynt in April 1941. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is hoping to trace the relatives of the six crew members before a granite memorial slab is put in place. At the moment a small cairn marks the crash site and some wreckage can still be seen on the remote Munro.
The crew were flying the twin-engined aircraft on a night navigation exercise from RAF Kinloss in Moray on 13 April. The plane crashed at 701 metres and the men’s bodies were not discovered until 25 May due to poor weather and the difficulty of the terrain and remote location. They were buried near the crash site which is designated as a war grave. The War Graves Commission wants to preserve the integrity of the burial site with a stone memorial, as a war grave it is an offence to remove any of the wreckage from the site.
At 998 metres, Ben More is the highest mountain in the Assynt area with views over a vast area of Northern Scotland.