Sabre 23380 on Iron Crag, Ennerdale.

This Sabre was on a cross country training flight on Friday the 26th June 1959. The aircraft's last flight began at Prestwick in Scotland at 13.00hrs and the pilot headed in a rough south-easterly direction to avoid the hills near the airfield, he was heading to Wethersfield, Essex and then onto his parent airfield of Grostenquin, France. Thick mist was over the Lake District on this day and the aircraft soon entered this but having cleared some of the larger hills at the north-east side of the area he descended through the cloud to get a fix on his location, presumably assuming he was clear of the hills. This error would sadly cost him his life. The aircraft struck the ground south of Ennerdale Water close to the summit of Iron Crag at 13.11hrs, after which the aircraft broke up. It would be a further two days until a search party would locate the remains of the aircraft, the majority of which had been scattered down the grass and scree where it still rests today. The pilot's watch was recovered, this had stopped at 13.11hrs confirming the time of the crash.

Pilot - F/O Robert Gordon "Robin" Starling RCAF (216497), aged 27. Buried Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey.

Robert Starling was the son of Robert and Beryl Starling, he was born on 30th October 1932 and enlisted into the RCAF on 23rd October 1953 in Montreal. His parents had either ran or where running Powri Hill Colliery in India at the time of his death. The photograph of him shown above was found on the "www.veterans.gc.ca" website.

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Will Lund and myself visited this crash site in October 2003. The virtually complete tail section that was at the site until afew years ago had been taken to Millom museum but since it's closure where it now is housed is not known.