She said: “I was raised knowing Malcom and so I feel like I’ve always known him.
“I’m happy because I am here for family who couldn’t be.
“My great grandma Williams, his mother, she never came here, never had the opportunity to. So it’s like I’m walking for her.”
Sqn Ldr Barry Darwin was just four years old when the crash happened but can still remember it.
He said: “I went to the back of the house – because my two brothers and sisters and mum were talking about a crash in Endcliffe Park – and I saw a huge plume of black smoke stretching across the sky.
“Most bomber crashes were in open country. This flew over a city of 500,000 and every time I come to check on this memorial another person comes up to me and says ‘I was there, I remember it’.”
Col Justin Hodge, of the United States Space Force, said: “It’s exceptionally important to be here paying tribute to the men who lost their lives, sacrificing themselves and their futures so that the children that were playing here that day could live and carry on with theirs.”
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