Only days after one Hudson had gone down on the Moors, another was lost. Again with heavy snow was on the ground this Hudson left Thornaby at around 11.15hrs on the 22nd January 1941 and flew south. The crew were ferrying the aircraft to another airfield, St Eval in Cornwall where it was urgently needed for Ops, 220 Squadron came to Thornaby on 21st August 1939. After taking off it flew over Swainby very low and without gaining height it crashed soon after striking the moor top behind the village at 11.30hrs. The aircraft struck the moor and crashed down this for a short while before coming to rest near the join of two small streams where it caught fire and later burnt out. Two of the four crew were killed in the crash, but one of the survivors (thought to be Sgt McHugh) walked down the beck for help. The first house he came to was a small cottage just north of Osmotherley, he woke the elderly lady and summoned help. The other stayed with the wreck, presumably as he was more seriously injured. The wreckage was mainly cleared from the site soon after by the RAF but after young boys found some .303 bullets in the years after the war in the beck bottom the rest was pretty much cleared away. The crash site is now very close to the tourist hot-spot.

Hudson T8371 was built by Lockheed-Vega at Burbank, California and purchased without contract by the B.P.C. It was shipped to the UK arriving on 15th August 1940. After assembly and testing at M.U. it was issued to 220 Squadron at Thornaby. In the incident detailed above it was written off with Cat.E2/FA damage being recorded.

Killed were :

Navigator / Second Pilot - Sgt Laurence B Scase RAFVR (745674), aged 24, ot Thetford, Norfolk. Buried Stoke-On-Trent Hartshill Cemetery.

Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - Sgt William Parfitt RAFVR (626274), aged 23, of Longton, Stoke-on-Trent. Buried Stoke-On-Trent Longton Cemetery.

Injured were:

First Pilot - Sgt C Smith RAF, serious burns. No further details are known.

Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - Sgt Thomas J McHugh RAF (653675), of Finsbury Park, Middlesex. Sustained burn injuries.

Sgt Parfitt and Sgt Smith. I am sorry about the quality of these two photos, they come from a poor quality copy of the 220 Squadron photo taken 4th April 1939.

Sgt Parfitt, then an Aircraftman, was partly responsible for the sighting of the German prison ship the "Altmark" at 12.52hrs on the 16th February 1940. His 220 Sqdn Hudson coded "V" was one of three aircraft which located the ship and eventually led to those imprisoned on her to be freed by Royal Navy. His crew that day were: Flt/Lt Downton, F/O Thwaite, A/C Parfitt, LAC Wilson. They had been searching since dawn of the that day in misty conditions, this cleared by mid-day and the "Altmark" was spotted, the Hudson's made their approach, one of which dived low and the ship's name was clearly seen, the other aircraft shadowed the first aircraft. The Royal Navy having being alerted arrived at 14.00hrs, in the form of HMS Cossack who were able to free the prisoners on board the German ship.

Sgt McHugh was later promoted to F/Sgt, he was reported missing on 6th August 1941 and was still serving with 220 Squadron. He is listed on the Runnymede Memorial and was only twenty years old. My thanks to Mr McHugh who has contacted me during my early research regarding his uncle who survived this crash on the North Yorkshire Moors.

John Skinn and I visited the site in March 2003, we found only afew small melted remains of alloy near a stream. Nothing else nearby was found. Oxygen bottles and larger remains were to be found until the mid-1980s but since then everything has pretty much gone.

All the remaining wreckage photographed on a frosty morning in 2003. On another visit the largest adder I have ever come across was hiding under this and gave me one heck of a fright!

My thanks to Mr Bell, now of Swainby for recounting his memories of this incident to me in 2004.