Military monument at Europa Point commemorating 1943 Gibraltar B-24 crash.
The Sikorski Memorial is a military monument at Europa Point, Gibraltar. It commemorates the 4 July 1943 Gibraltar B-24 Liberator crash that killed General Władysław Sikorski, Polish commander-in-chief and prime minister in exile, and fifteen others. The present sandstone memorial, the third version, was unveiled on 4 July 2013.
The Sikorski Memorial is a military monument at Europa Point in Gibraltar, dedicated to the dead from the 4 July 1943 Gibraltar B-24 crash. The accident involved Liberator aircraft AL523 and caused the death of General Władysław Sikorski, commander-in-chief of the Polish Army and Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, along with fifteen others; only the pilot, Eduard Prchal, survived. The memorial was first dedicated in January 1945 as a plaque near the east end of the runway of RAF North Front, close to the crash site. In 2003 the Royal Air Force donated this plaque to the Government of Gibraltar and a new plinth with the plaque and a recovered propeller from the crashed B-24 was erected near the airfield at Sir Herbert Miles Road. The current memorial, unveiled on 4 July 2013 and forming the third iteration, stands between Europa Point Lighthouse and Harding’s Battery. It has a semi-circular sandstone structure about 5 metres in diameter and 3 metres high, built largely of Szydłów sandstone from Poland. A propeller from the previous memorial is mounted on a large central plinth, surrounded by tablets naming the victims and explaining the 1943 crash.
