The Last Flight of Halifax L9561 (2021)

The film you are about to see is an amateur documentary made by my brother, Terry, and myself. We started the project in October 2015 and completed it in September 2021. It is made as a tribute to the crew of Halifax L9561 of which our father, Bill Hunt, was a member. Barry Hunt December 2021. On the evening of Sunday 12th October 1941 more than three hundred bombers took off from airfields across England. It was to be the greatest British air attack of the war so far. Their targets? Armament factories in Nuremberg and Bremen. Of the ninety nine aircraft ordered to bomb Bremen there was just one of the new Handley Page Halifaxes, the four-engined bomber introduced only a year before. The plane was Halifax L9561 of 76 Squadron, based at RAF Middleton St. George in County Durham. Its eight strong crew was experienced but young. The Canadian pilot, Sgt Elmer Muttart was just twenty three years old. In this film we recount the events of that night. We learn about the unique strengths and weaknesses of the Halifax itself. The skills of the engineers and ground crew who prepared the planes ready for action, night after night. We get an impression of what life was like for the men and women stationed at Middleton St. George. We follow the journey of L9561, over the North Sea into danger in the skies above Friesland in the Netherlands. And we learn of the remarkable heroism displayed by its young pilot. His heroism and self-sacrifice. Because this was to be.... THE LAST FLIGHT of HALIFAX L9561