Hello all, thought you might be interested in this entry from Thomas Archibald West's log book. while with 1659 HCU based at RAF Topcliffe... Date Hour Aircraft Pilot Duty 13.4.1944 10.25 Halifax FD-S F/Sgt Thompson Air Gunner This aircraft crashed with a Canadian crew on board on 22nd October 1944, (8 days later) at the Great Carrs, in the Lake district. Halifax LL505 FD-S of 1659 HCU RAF at Great Carrs I would have upload a jpg picture of this entry but I get the message "there was a problem with uploading your file", no explabation. Any help would be appreciaited. Phil
Phil B Any image posted has a limitation of 2 mb. Reduce your image to below this size and it will allow you to post Ron
How interest to see the Accident Report, may they rest in peace. The jpg file I'm trying to upload is less then 2Mb it's 146Kb and still I get the same message "there was a problem with uploading your file". It's a pity because I have others that might also be interesting for members. Phil
I have a photograph of the memorial to this Halifax at the crash site on Great Carrs...taken by my nephew while walking in the Lake District. It was on a memory stick but it seems to have been corrupted. However it's original source must be somewhere on my computer.If this fails then I will see if my nephew still has the image.
This is the Log of Thomas Archibald West (Air Gunner) showing flight of Halifax FD-S LL505, 8 days before it crashed. I've now managed to upload the file using a different browser, I used Chrome instead of my usual browser Firefox. There must different settings for each. Phil
A good dedicated source on the loss of LL 505 is here.The photographs of the memorial are similar to the ones taken by my nephew. Halifax LL505 - Great Carrs. Looking at the Flying Accident report,the HCU is wrongly identified as the 1695 HCU on the first page but is identified correctly on the last page as the 1659 HCU. It appears that the aircraft was one of 480 ordered from Rootes Group Securities and was in the last numbers of the Halifax Mark V production run.Production then commenced on Halifax Mark 111s,the first one delivered 13 May 1944 which suggests that LL 505 was delivered new early in 1944 to the HCU,not very common as HCU aircraft were noted as being ops veterans or said to be clapped out aircraft. From the airframe running hours,the aircraft looks to be on its second set of Merlins with the Port Inner engine changed at about 45 hours.Aircraft declared to be Category E ...destroyed...write off.In this case the location of the crash was such that the wreck was not recovered for scrap. This poor photograph image shows the debris area in 1971 and among the debris shown was said to be the 4 engines and tail plane of the aircraft (Courtesy. Brian J Rapier.White Rose Base)
Another good source for information on the loss of Halifax ll 505 is this... Military Aircraft Crash Sites: Lake District This is also the map indicating the crash area from Wainwright's "the Southern Fells"looking west...south west...debris area down the side of Great Carrs.