On the 4th of December 1944 this Halifax took off from Marston Moor, Yorkshire at 22.25hrs for a training flight.
The crew were practicing low level night bombing on a bombing range on the North Yorkshire Moors (thought to be the range on Helmsley Moor).
It was after this bombing practice when the crew were making their away from the area at night when they were flying very low in the Sutton Bank area.
The aircraft was so low that, flying roughly a north-westerly direction, it passed very close to the Hambleton Inn and its propellers caught
the ground to the south of Dialstone Farm taking out lumps of turf and earth. It then lost a number of propeller blades here and the aircraft sustained further damage by these breaking away.
The aircraft did not crash immediately but somehow remained in the air; it climbed slightly, showered Dialstone Farm in fuel and small bits of
aircraft and carried on in the air for a short period, probably gliding rather than flying under power by this stage. Having reached the escarpment edge of the Hambleton Hills,
the aircraft sunk into the Vale of York below. Mr Joseph Sharp was living at Dialstone at the time recalled to me finding the propeller marks near Cold Kirby and
following them to find wooden propellers. The aircraft crashed soon after near Southwood Hall at 23.10hrs while flying in a downwards attitude, the aircraft crashed through woodland and broke up.
Five of the crew lost their lives as a result of the accident, two survived.
Pilot - F/Sgt Graham (Mac) E McGrath RAAF (428341), aged 20, of Clayton, Victoria, Australia. Buried Harrogate Stonefall Cemetery, Yorkshire.
Navigator - Sgt William R (Bill) Edwards RAFVR (1607130), aged 28, of Inverness. Buried Inverness Tomnahurich Cemetery. Seriously injured and taken to Northallerton Hospital, died on 8 Dec 1944.
Air Bomber - Sgt Joseph F Cromarty RAFVR (1567127), aged 22, of Edinburgh, buried Edinburgh Rosebank Cemetery. Taken to Northallerton Hospital but died four days later.
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - F/Sgt Desmond M (Rip) Lee RAAF (434687), aged 21, of Cairns, Australia. Buried Harrogate Stonefall Cemetery, Yorkshire.
Flight Engineer - Sgt Peter H (Pete) Reynolds RAFVR (1850794), aged 20, of London, buried Harrogate Stonefall Cemetery, Yorkshire.
Mid Upper Gunner - Sgt Ronald Bosley RAF. Aged 22, of Ebbw Vale, South Wales. Seriously injured, taken to Northallerton Hospital. He later recovered and is still alive.
Rear Gunner - Sgt Norman (Tug) Wilson RAF. Aged 31, of Gateshead, Newcastle. Seriously injured, taken to Northallerton Hospital. He spent 18 months in hospital before being able to return home.
In August 2005 I was blessed by one of the survivors contacting me, he kindly gave me a full account of what happened on
this night. T thank him for kindly taking the time to send this infomation, little would I realise when creating this website such contact with survivors would happen.
I do not wish to shorten Mr Bosley's account and the following is in his own words...
""The flight was to be our last training bombing run. Due to cloud we were unable to see our target.
Desiring to complete our training that night, 'Mac' (Macgrath) our pilot, asked 'Bill' (Edwards) the navigator
the height of mountains in the area. Bill checked and informed Mac 1100 feet, safe to descend to 2000 feet which
the pilot gradually did. When at 2000 ft we hit the mountain, Mac called "Crash Positions". We ran approx a mile
along the top, leaped
over the valley and hit another mountain top. Next thing I knew I was lying in a pool of petrol which was coming
down from the tank in the wing. I had obviously been unconcious. The plane had split roughly across the middle. I had been thrown out (fracturing a vertabrae I found out later
in hospital). I crawled around the front of the plane, heard someone moaning, crawled further around and found
the wireless operator 'Rip' D.M.Lee, the engineer 'Pete' H.Reynolds and the navigator 'Bill' (Edwards) lying
one on top of the other. I then dragged them clear of the petrol - only Bill was alive. I then crawled to the rear part of the plane where the rear gunner 'Tug' (Wilson) was still trapped. I could
not reach him because of my injury, but stayed nearby talking to reasure him, saying I was sure someone would
come. The 'someone' who arrived was the farmer over whose home we had flown, (unfortunately pouring petrol
over his property). He informed me that he had telephoned the fire brigade. This farmer later visited me in
hospital telling me that they had been unable to have a fire or cook for several days. Next to arrive was
the fire brigade who checked us all, made me as comfortable as possble, released 'Tug'
from his turret and checked the rest of the crew moving them further away from the aircraft out of further
danger. A while later came a doctor from a Canadian squadron somewhere in the vicinity who tried to inject
everyone, including the civilians. I told him "politely" to go away and leave us alone. Whilst I was in hospital at Northallerton, I was visited by two RAF Officers regarding my version of the crash.
I gave them the same description of events as given to you regarding the height of mountains and heights we could
descend to. {{I sent Mr Bosley the RAF's AM1180 crash report for this incident}}
I see from your copy of the official report that they concluded it was pilot error. Mac was too good a
pilot to descend lower than the navigator's recommendation. It also stated that we crashed at 1050ft. This confirms
the answer given by the navigator, i.e. the highest point in the area was 1100ft. I have always been convinced that
the altimeter was over-reading on that night's flight. I was hospitalised for nearly 3 weeks, when the authorities decided to clear as many patients as possible for
Christmas. As my wife was staying in the area and visiting daily I was allowed home to Ebbw Vale, South Wales,
on sick leave in her charge to convalesse for approx 1 month. I returned to light duties for a few months and around the middle of March was declared fit to fly again. I joined
a new crew and was posted to 466 RAAF Station at Driffield, Yorks. I completed around 5 operations, then the war
ended fortunately. I retrained as a Motor Mechanic, was posted to RAF Cranwell from where I was eventually
demobbed in June 1946.""
Halifax LW278 was built to contract ACFT/1808/C4/C by E.E.C. Ltd at Salmesbury and was delivered directly to 158 Squadron
at Lissett in September 1943, it served with them until the unit converted to Halifax B.III's in January 1944.
The aircraft was then transferred to 1652 HCU At Marston Moor some time in early 1944. It was written off as a result of the
crash detailed above, sustaining Cat.E2/FA damage.
Graham McGrath was born on the 7th of March 1924 at Clayton, Victoria, Australia. He worked as a clerk in Melbourne prior to enlisting. The photograph shown above was kindly
sent by Mr Norman Wilson (Jnr).
Three of the crew were buried at Harrogate Stonefall Cemetery, one in Edinburgh and one in Inverness. No photograph of the full crew of this aircraft is known to be in existance.
F/Sgt Lee was born on the 14th of July 1923 in Cairns, Australia. He enlisted on 5th January 1943 also in Cairns, he was a joiner and carpenter by trade. Sadly
his older brother Beverley G Lee RAAF was also killed during the War, he lost his life on 30th June 1944 after a mid-air collision caused his Lancaster to crash in Sussex. He is buried at
Brookwood Cemetery and was 31 years old.
Sgt William Edwards grave in Inverness Cemetery. I would like to thank the gardeners at this cemetery for taking time out of their lunch break to help me locate his grave. The CWGC info held on his grave location is incorrect.
In November 2007 I was again fortunate enough to be emailed by Mrs Diane DeKlerk, the grand-daughter of Norman Wilson who
in turn put me in contact with her father Mr Norman Wilson (Jnr), Mr Wilson was
kind enough to firstly send the painting of his father (shown above) and to be able to give further information into his fathers
life and flying career. I would like to thank him for this. Norman Wilson was born on the 15th of January 1913 in Gateshead on Tyne, at the
age of fourteen he left school to become a coal miner and worked in mines around the Newcastle and Gateshead area. At the outbreak of War he was
transferred to work in an iron ore mine near Saltburn, Yorkshire where he married and had his son also named Norman in 1940 (they later had a daughter).
He joined the Saltburn Home Guard where he had some training on Lewis guns. He twice
survived being buried alive in mining accidents before volunteering to join the services at the end of 1943 and after basic training
opted to be an air gunner after getting the taste for machine guns with the Home Guard. He first flew on 18th February 1944 at 11 AGS at Andreas, Isle of Man in
Anson LT837 with the pilot being F/Sgt Proudfoot. Following 21 flights in Ansons at this training unit and seventeen hours flying he completed the course
on 11th May 1944 but officially qualified as an air gunner on 28th April 1944.
His next training was with 21 OTU, "X" Flight, based at Moreton in the Marsh and
he first flew in a Wellington on 15th June 1944 with the
pilot being W/O Bagnall. He would then make his first flight with "Mac" McGrath here, and here he added 10hrs 40 minutes flying
before being posted to "D" Flight of 21 OTU at Enstone later in June 1944. Again he first flew in
a Wellington here on 27th June 1944 with F/O Gray being the pilot. His (and probably the main part of his crew) completed 56 flights from
Enstone though mainly training exercises until 23rd September 1944 (although "Tug" returned to Moreton in the Marsh for parachute and
dinghy training from 3rd July to 18th August) and clocked up 50 hours flying in the day and 45 hours flying at night. One of these flights was
a leaflet dropping operation over Norway (with "Mac" and "Rip") on 13th August 1944 and possibly a further such flight. He was later awarded a
medal from the King of Norway for making such flights.
The basic crew were later posted to Marston Moor, picked up their mid-upper gunner and the flight engineer and made their first flight here in a Halifax
on 2nd November 1944 with F/O Knox being the pilot (probably an instructor) in aircraft "GV-B" where they continued to have training exercises.
Of the events of the night of the accident Mr Wilson is able to say that his fathers recollections of the incident was that they had one
last night-flying exercise to do before joining an operational squadron the following week. Mac had refused two faulty planes before
accepting the one which caused the crash. Here it is probably best to quote directly from Mr Wilson's email, his father was
a very lucky man to
survive the accident, his father thought that
""they were returning to base and the engines cut out one
after the other and the plane "nose dived" into the ground, after which he lost consciousness. He said he remembered someone
telling him to blow his whistle but not remembering whether he did or not, then waking up in hospital in plaster unable to move.
He remembered asking about Mac & Rip and the rest of the crew, to be told they were in a different part of the hospital, but given
no details. (It was much later he learned of their deaths). He was under the impression that the mid-upper gunner had walked away from
the crash uninjured, had been posted to a squadron a couple of weeks later and had been shot down and killed on his 1st mission, so
that he was now the sole survivor of the crew. {This was not the case however}. The injuries he sustained were to plague him for
the rest of his life. When I saw him in Northallerton Hospital, he was covered from head to toe in plaster. His left arm, left leg in
slings, his body, back & front in one-inch plaster cast. He had a fractured skull, his arm broken in two places such that a
steel plate had to be bolted in situ. His pelvis was fractured and he had to be taught to walk again (with a limp, as one
leg was now about 1/2in. shorter than the other). He had 3 broken ribs & a broken leg. I believe he was in Northallerton for about
18 months before being transferred closer home to Dunstan Hill Hospital (Gateshead). Even after his discharge he was being
admitted 3-4 times per year because of pelvis problems. Until about 1948 when we moved house, he was in regular contact with
both Mrs McGrath & Mrs Lee. Mrs Lee came to England to visit her boys graves"" and met up with the Wilson family. Mrs Lee
brought two pieces of coral from the Great Barrier Reef which she had placed on her boys gravestones. Mr Wilson remembers seeing
them there when he and his father and mother visited the graves in Harrogate in the early 1950's and again in 1986 when he visited
with his wife.
Norman Wilson died in 1987.
The photograph above shows a general view of the area of where the crash occured as seen from the escarpment above. The aircraft
crash site is one of the less known sites in the area and
while including it on this website is needed for completeness it is probably not going to keep it unknown.
The photographs shown here do not give the location away!
Some of the parts at the crash site are very rare for a Halifax site in Yorkshire and it is known that upon finding my website
one local individual does visit these sites and more often than not he removes these rarer parts. After many years of trying to locate the crash site
John Skinn and myself finally found it in July 2008.
The photograph above shows a complete portion of cockpit windscreen, this part was located in the centre section of the front windscreen. Photographed on a very wet day.
The photograph above shows a rare aileron mass balance. The Halifax had two of these, one on the top side
of the end of each wing to stop the ailerons flapping about. Made of lead they simply do not show up at crash sites today.
The photograph above shows an instrument face found at the crash site many years ago by fellow researcher Mr Ken Reast.
The woodland through which the aircraft crashed.
This photograph shows a non-natural scar in the woodland which contains small peices of perspex, I would suggest that this mark was created by the bulk of the aircraft and it is
infact very close to the point of impact, if not the point of impact.
