Thanks must firstly go to the families of airmen who have kindly contacted me, without which this website would not be as complete. Thanks also to Messers John Skinn, Howard Newbould, Graham Sharpe, Eric Barton, Nick Roberts, David Thompson, Ken Reast, Jim Corbett, Russ Grey, Johnnie Shipley, Neil Anderson (and the rest of the ACIA folks), Bill Norman, David Earl, Albert Pritchard, Andy Hunter, Jim Rutland, Henk Welting, Errol Martyn, Michael Hurst, Alan Clark and Mark Sheldon. We are all one small band of researchers in Northern England who are linked by this passion to research these losses and lives of the related airmen.
My thanks also to friends Will Lund, Sam Beck and Luke Soloman who have been dragged along to search for things and to my wife, Caroline who also has assisted on many searches in the Lake District and on almost all of the visits to cemeteries to track down graves of these airmen lost.
The following books and documents have been a great help in my research :
The RAF Museum. Hendon.
"Air Ministry" documents - AM1180, AM78, Form 765(c), Unit O.R.B.s
The C.W.G.C. website and database.
The UK National Archives.
RAF Bomber Command Losses series of nine books - W R Chorley.
Hell On High Ground 1 & 2 - David W Earl.
Failed To Return, Broken Eagles, Luftwaffe Over The North & 640 Sqdn Leconfield - Bill Norman.
White Rose Base and Warplanes Return - Brian J Rapier.
High Ground Wrecks and Relics, Britains Military Airfields 1939-45, various "Crash Log" publictaions - David J Smith.
The East Moor Experience - Brian Shields.
Some Of the Many { 77 Squadron } - Roy Walker.
Nova Scotia Air Force Fatalities - Douglas A Stallard.
RAF Pocklington and Elvington War Diaries - Mike Underwood.
Wings Over York {RAF Rufforth} - Brain Mennell.
RAF & RCAF Aircraft Nose Art - Clarence Simonsen.
Various "Crash Log" publications - Nick Roberts.
Series of post-war RAF losses books (under various names) - Colin Cummings.
Thunderbirds at War (429 Sqdn) - Larmot.
Goosepool (a history of Middleton St. George) - Stanley D Howes.
Air Crashes in the Lake District - Michael J Hurst.
Aircraft crashes on the North Yorkshire Moors - Howard Newbould (Unpublished).
Coastal Command Losses 1939-41 - Ross McNeill.
The Yorkshire Post.
The Yorkshire Evening Press.
The Scarborough Evening News.
The Northern Echo.
The Darlington and Stockton Times.
The Malton Gazette & Herald.
No account detailing aircraft crashes in Yorkshire would be complete without a photo of the great man, Mr Brian Rapier. Without his early efforts in the 1960s and 1970s in recording these incidents and for creating the now-defunct York-based museum, later researchers would not have his work to turn to. This photograph shows him at a Dornier crash site on the North Yorkshire Moors. His books are still some of the greatest books on the subject and are a must for anyone with an interest. Dispite being over 30 years old and there now being much more information available to the public these works still present a worthy read today. His name is still the one name anyone who has being doing this research in the past refers to today.