On the night of 17th/18th December 1942 some 15 Dornier Do217 aircraft were to set out from their bases to bomb York. Whilst on route this aircraft is believed to have been damaged by anti-aircraft fire in the Scarborough/Whitby area and as a result it failed to gain enough height to clear the North Yorkshire Moors. The aircraft struck Wheeldale Moor above Goathland at 22.15 hrs at speed and at a fairly shallow angle and disintergrated. The wreckage was spread over a large area. The German crew didn't stand a chance, all four died instantly. The wreckage was not found until 12.00hrs on the 20th of December 1942. Another aircraft crashed near Hawnby on the same night and is documented on this website.
Pilot - Fw Wilhelm Stoll, aged 25. Buried Acklam Road Cemetery, Thornaby on Tees, Yorkshire (now Cleveland).
Obs - Obgfr Hans Roeschner, aged 20. Buried Acklam Road Cemetery, Thornaby on Tees, Yorkshire (now Cleveland).
W Op - Obgfr Gerhard Wicht, aged 22. Buried Acklam Road Cemetery, Thornaby on Tees, Yorkshire (now Cleveland).
Mech - Obgfr Franz Armann, aged 19. Buried Acklam Road Cemetery, Thornaby on Tees, Yorkshire (now Cleveland).
The graves of the four crew at Thornaby on Tees.
The main collection of wreckage at the site as it was in May 1975 (photo Mr Graham Sharpe).
The same area as it was in December 2006.
I visited first visited the site early in 2002, little appeared to remain there then. Very small peices of bent and twisted alloy scatter the moor for some distance, some tiny peices of perspex and glass were also found in areas of short heather. What appeared to have been a molten alloy was also found close to a stream, as was one bullet case. It is thought that alot of the larger parts were removed from the site in the mid 1970s after the area suffred the effects of massive uncontrolled moorland fire. Since my first visit I have returned a number of times, no real change to the site has been observed other than much of the scattering of wreckage has now been collected up and is now together in very deep heather. By following the wreckage trail as it is today it would appear that the aircraft did not simply flying in over Whitby, as is the general assumption, and then straight into the first lump of high ground it got to. The scatter of wreckage is over a good half to three quarters of a mile in an almost west to east direction. Whitby is at 90 degrees to this line.
Part of the aircrafts bomb bay which was at the site in 1975 but disappeared from this crash site many years ago (photo Mr Graham Sharpe).
John Skinn and myself paid the site another visit in October 2007 and by chance found a cast cylindrical object some distance from the main collection of wreckage. Upon closer inspection and cleaning up in a stream this part was seen to have a makers plate on it in German writing. Given the engines are known to have rolled some distance after the aircraft crashed we presume that this part broke off during this roll. A small amount of research on the internet has being worthwhile; the wording at the base of the plate reads "Hersteller Deutsche Benzinuhren GMBH Berlin" this appears to then roughly translate to being part of the fuel pumping system from one of the BMW 801 engines.
Also of note is that during the search for missing Meteor WD778 in March 1954 (which was later found crashed near Appleby in Westmorland), a search helicopter pilot F/Lt J Hamilton landed his machine near aircraft wreckage on the North Yorkshire Moors and removed some peices back to Linton on Ouse for identification, these later turned out to be from a German aircraft and this is almost certainly from this Dornier. This bits were probably scrapped.