On 6th September 1945 a Tiger Moth was being flown over North Yorkshire with the navigator undergoing a refresher course. The weather over the Moors became bad, cloud covered the area and the two crew soon became lost. The pilot then made the error in descending through the cloud to try and get a visual fix on the ground, it was whilst doing so the aircraft struck the ground on Spaunton Moor 55 minutes into the flight. The two on board were lucky, they survived the crash but the aircraft was badly damaged and was later written off. It seems likely that the aircraft had perhaps drifted too far north as the area the aircraft crashed on over looks the Vale of Pickering although the RAF's AM1180 crash card is unavailable to confirm this.
Tiger Moth N6793 was built to contract 778402/38 by D.H. at Hatfield and delivered to the RAF in April 1939. After acceptance it was issued to 13 E&RFTS at White Waltham. This unit was redesignated 13 EFTS in September 1939 and remained active until it disbanded in 1941. The aircraft is believed to have been on charge throughout this period. After a period of MU storage the aircraft was issued to 21 EFTS at Hucknall on an as yet unspecified date. After another period of storage it was finally issued to 4 EFTS at Brough from where it served until suffering this accident detailed above and suffereing Cat.E2/FA(Burnt) damage.
Instructor Pilot - F/Sgt J S Carter RAF - Injured.
Navigator - Sgt P W Barsby RAF - Injured.
The identities of the crew remain unknown, it is possible that the navigator was one Peter William Barsby who died in the Wrekin area of Shropshire in 2005.
In January 2004 John Skinn and I first visited the site. What remained at the site that was either in a shallow pit or was scattered around the moor close by. A fire must have happened at some point after the crash, probably the result of the RAF clear-up team setting fire to what remained of the aircraft. There is a small collection of melted alluminium set into the peat and other burnt remains were found nearby. Probably the only two of the remaining peices containing part numbers were found, one of these begun with the "82" prefix which I gather was one of the marks of the Tiger Moth (or the D.H.82). An amount of wood is in the shallow depression and has either suffered from heather burning or was also damaged in the crash.