On Friday, the 27th April 1979 a Phantom jet based at the major U.S.A.F. base at Alconbury was on a low level tactical reconaissance mission over the North of England, it is thought that the crew were taking photographs at low level over the North Yorkshire Moors. It is not known whether the visibility was bad when the aircraft took off but at the time of the eventual accident visibility was good; it was a fine day. The aircraft was flying over the Moors roughly east to west and towards the Lealholm area when the engine stalled, the pilot boosted the power to the engine but flames came out of the rear of the aircraft. The crew must by now have realised that they were left with no option but to stay with their aircraft and try to land it. The plane was seen to bank left at a low level as it approached Lealholm. A witness said that he saw the two airmen in their cockpit seconds before impact during this banking. At 09.40hrs the wing of the Phantom then dug into the ground causing a large rut to be made, the aircraft would have been travelling far too fast for any control to be made at this stage and it then cartwheeled some distance before completely disintergrating in a fireball across fields below Lealholmside.
As fate would have it this was not the first serious accident on this spot. On 16th July 1970 a bus crashed on the same bank and ended up in exactly where the piece of wall beside the road was that the aircraft then destroyed later that decade. Sadly at least six people died of their injuries following this bus crash.
Pilot - Major Donald Lee Schuyler USAF, aged 33. Buried Inglewood Park Cemetery, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Navigator - 1st Lt Thomas Doyle Wheeler USAF, aged 25, of Baker City, Oregon, USA. Buried Hillcrest Memorial Gardens, Caldwell, Canyon County, Idaho, USA.
Donald Schuyler was born on 1st February 1941 at Bakersfield, California and was the son of Jack Lee and Helen Louise (nee Hankins) Schuyler. His military service had seen him serve in Vietnam. He was married with children who appear to have lived at Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California. This area was destroyed by fire in January 2025.
Thomas Wheeler was born on 3rd May 1953 at Portland, Oregon and was the son of Doyle Grant and Eunice Elaine (nee Fisher) Wheeler. He attended the Baker High School in Baker City, Oregon and then the University of Idaho. He married Charolette Wagers on 23rd May 1978 at Caldwell, Idaho.
The line and dots were drawn on my photo by Mr D.Garbutt, who visited the crash the day it happened and who kindly contacted me in 2005. The Phantom crashed left to right. The nose cone was found in an oddly good condition close to the road up the hill (see photo above - green dot), The aircraft passed through the stone wall to the left of the road and across this road leaving numerous scrape marks on it. It then crashed through the ditch at the other side of the road and through another stone wall bordering this ditch. The fields at this side of the road had hundreds of sheep in them. The resulting fireball which scorched the land also killed many of these animals. Two telegraph poles in these fields were also broken down. The engines stopped after a distance across these next fields (blue dots). Grim as it may be, the red dots show where the airmen were found. The wreckage was scattered the full length of the crash site, which was about half a mile in length. Wreckage travelled across these fields and up the hill into gardens of the houses along the Lealholmside road and was also found in gardens to the top left of the photo, near where the impact was. Following the crash someone or people stole the canopy or parts of the canopy from the crash site, after a wide scale search part was later found having been deposited near Scarth Nick, Osmotherley.
It was widely thought that the crew guided their aircraft away from the village and into these fields above Lealholm and therefore saving the village and nearby school from being struck which would have resulted in a much greater loss of life. By looking at the line drawn across the photo it would appear a near miracle that no other buildings were hit in the crash and that the crew knew exactly what they were doing when they directed their aircraft away from the village. The school would have opened less than an hour previously and would have been full. The crew stood no chance of surviving the crash, they are commemorated by a stone, erected by villagers, near the scene of the crash.
The memorial to the two USAF crew who died in this accident. The aircraft's full history is not yet known other than it was built by McDonnell Douglas at St.Louis, USA.
The Phantom crashed through these fields and walls just below Lealholmside. My thanks to Mr D Garbutt and his father for their memories of this incident and also to members of the USAF team who were sent to clear the site, without which this page would not be as complete.
