The Avro Lancaster was a large four-engine bomber of the British Air Force, delivering more bombs than any other Allied aircraft during World War II. There were more than 7,300 built and more than half of those were lost in action. This pinion gear is a landing mechanism from the crash of the "G" for George bomber that occurred in Bavegem, Belgium on August 13, 1944. Nineteen-year old Tom Young was flight engineer and co-pilot that day, and survived with five other crew members. The pilot, John Lawrie, sacrificed himself for their escape.
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Quickly fleeing from the crash site, Tom eluded capture by the Germans with the help of local villagers and the Belgian underground in Bavegem. He was provided clothes, food, and was hidden with an older woman Tante Betty in nearby Ghent, where he posed as her gardener. In six weeks time, Ghent was liberated by the Canadians of the Eighth Army, and Tom was able to return to his home in Scotland.
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In 1970 he returned to Belgium for a reunion of the underground organization, and met the families who had hidden him. In 2019, Tom’s son Brian traveled to Bavegem to visit the site and meet families in the town. Residents brought various plane parts that had been recovered from the crash site in 1944 and gave Brian this pinion as a memento of his father’s ordeal.

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