On 17th February 1943 this No.15 Elementary Flying Training School aircraft took off from Kingstown (Carlisle) at 16.00hrs to undertake a dual control training exercise that would have seen they fly a rough triangular route to Lockerbie, then to Maryport then back to Kingstown. The weather when they took off from not perfect but deemed still suitable for flying. They reached Lockerbie at 16.28hrs then turned toward Maryport but by the time they came south the wind direction had changed slightly which saw them drift east of their intended route. At 16.42hrs the pupil noted that they were over Aspatria and they then flew into dense and turbulent cloud conditions. In view of the flying conditions they then opted to turn around and head back to base. A short time later the instructor decended with a view to getting below the cloud but in doing so the aircraft flew into the mountain of Binsey at around 17.00hrs. The instructor was killed in the crash but the pupil survived and was found by a passing lorry driver by the side of the A591 road. He was initially taken to a cottage hospital at Cockermouth and would recover from his injuries. The body of the instructor was taken down to Low Garth by local people prior to the authorities collecting him.
Instructor Pilot - F/O Alfred Ernest Woodley RAFVR (109066), aged 30. Buried Dalston Road Cemetery, Carlisle, Cumbria (11/P/48).
Trainee Pilot - P/O Douglas Keith Dovey RAFVR (135664). Injured.
Binsey as seen from the Skiddaw area (above) and the area of the crash (below).
Alfred Woodley was the son of Ernest Herbert and Eunice Mary (nee Kent) Woodley and was born on 22nd January 1913 at Perim Island, Republic of Yemen. Exactly why his parents were there in 1913 is unclear. He was in England by 1933 as he attended Cambridge University then. In 1936 he was teaching at Bryanston Boys School, Dorset. In 1937 he taught at a school in South Africa but returned to England by the end of the year. He married Betty Ida Louisa Soppitt in Deptford in 1938 and when the 1939 Register was made he was almost certainly teaching again Bryanston School. He received a commission in the RAFVR to the rank of P/O on probation on 12th July 1941 and was promoted to F/O on 12th July 1942. His widow was living in Blandford, Dorset when the CWGC compiled their records and she later remarried.
Douglas Dovey was probably the person of the same name, born 1st August 1921 at Holborn, London and was the son of Thomas and Bessie (nee ) Dovey. He was a bank clerk in London when the 1939 Register was made. He received a commission to the rank of P/O on probation (emergency) on 4th December 1942 and rose to F/O on 4th June 1943 and F/Lt on 4th December 1944. He remained in the RAFVR after the war and transferred to the Secretarial Branch on 24th August 1954 (with seniority of 17th November 1952). He married in 1955 at Bournemouth. He relinquished his commission of F/Lt in the RAF on 19th July 1968 and died in 2002 in Surrey.
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