At 10.45hrs on 18th December 1942 the crew of this No.2 Air Gunnery School aircraft set out from Dalcross in Scotland to ferry it to Henlow in Bedfordshire but before taking off the wireless transmitter was found not to be working. Despite this the crew took off and had planned to refuel at Catterick on their way south but whilst over Yorkshire the weather turned poor. As a result of poor visibility Catterick airfield was not located. 10/10th's cloud cover was reported over the North of England on this day and due to the wireless being unservicable a diversion signal could not be passed to the aircraft to go to another airfield where a landing could be safely made. It was thought that after running low on fuel the pilot had tried to land once darkness began to set in with the aircraft possibly suffering engine trouble before the attempted landing which may have been related to the lack of fuel. The pilot's choice of airfield could not have been worse, he spotted Topcliffe's "Q" Site decoy airfield near Sutton Bank at Cold Kirby, no doubt thinking it was a real airfield in the darknedd. He made a attempted forced landing at 12.15hrs. Just before touching down the undercarriage clipped a stone wall and the aircraft overturned on striking the ground near Garbutts Farm killing the pilot and badly injuring his passenger. The aircraft was written off following the crash.
Defiant N3458 was built to contract 751867/38 by Boulton & Paul Ltd at Wolverhampton and was delivered to the RAF in January 1941. After acceptance it was issued to 255 Squadron at Kirton in Lindsey in the same month. The unit moved to Hibaldstow on 15th May 1941. The aircraft transferred to 456 Squadron at Valley on 29th August 1941 and suffered a minor accident at Valley on 3rd September 1941 when an undercarriage leg broke on landing (recorded as Cat.Ac/FA in the unit records). Following this incident it was then repaired on site but was transferred to 256 Squadron at Squires Gate on 5th December 1941. It then suffered minor damage on 11th February 1942 when the undercarriage failed to lower after an air test. Either Cat.A or Cat.Ac/FA damage would have been the damage assessment and again it was repaired on site. The aircraft was probably transferred to MU storage in May 1942 when 256 Squadron ceased operating Defiants. The date it was issued to 2 A.G.S. at Dalcross is not yet known. As a result of the accident at Cold Kirby on 18th December 1942 Cat.E2/FA damage was the damage assessment that saw it struck off charge.
Pilot - F/Sgt Alan Frank Martin RAFVR (932841), aged 21. Buried Manor Park Cemetery, Essex.
Passenger - Sgt George Osmond Pitcher RAF (332458). Injured.
Alan Martin was the son of Lewis John and Ethel (nee Bullen) Martin and was born on 18th July 1921 at Romford, Essex. His father worked for a jeweller for Kendal and Dent, of Cheapside, London. His parents later lived at Seven Kings, Ilford when the 1939 Register was made and possibly with Alan though his name is redacted. At the time of his death he had a total of 512 hours flying to his name and 280 hours of which were on the Defiant type. I thank Mr Andrew Long for this photograph.
He was buried in a family plot Manor Park Cemetery, East Ham, London. During a visit to London in March 2007 I was fortunate enough to have been able to visit the cemetery and locate his grave. I would like to thank the cemetery manager, Ms Jan Briggs, for her help in locating the grave.
George Osmond Pitcher was born in Birmingham on 30th January 1902 and was the son of Arthur George Stevens and Emma Maria (nee Wright) Pitcher. When he was baptised on 16th April 1916 at Islington Methodist Chapel, Birmingham his family was living at Erskine Street, in the Duddeston area of the city. This would mean he was very old for aircrew in 1942 but his service number (332458) suggests that he was a civilian entrant from after March 1919. He married Alice Harriet Mary Westall at Bordesley, Warwickshire on 24th July 1929 and their son Edward was born in 1931. By the time the 1939 Register was made George was not living at home and may well have been serving in the RAF overseas. He was awarded a Mention in Despatches in 1922 for service in Iraq in 1920-21. He died in 1966.
Wreckage from the aircraft which is rumours to have included the Merlin engine was said to be present at the site until the 1980's, I have yet locate the crash site. A teacher at Easingwold School in the 1990s is said to have recovered part of this Merlin engine although claimed it to have been from a "Spitfire" crash at Sutton Bank but there were no Spifires that crashed here.