On 22nd August 1941 the crew of this aircraft were one of two 10 Squadron aircraft tasked with bombing the docks at Le Havre and they took off from Leeming at 22.02hrs, on board Whitley T4234 were at least three airmen flying their first operational flights and their pilot flying his first as captain. The wireless operator was the only experienced airman having already flown some twenty operational flights. Before take off the crews were informed that the weather conditions were expected to change by the time they would return to base. This crew bombed the target and made for home, soon after crossing the English coast the second pilot was given control of the aircraft for experience and the aircraft headed north aiming for base at Leeming with everything apparently normal. As they headed north it was thought that they drifted off course slightly too far west of their intended course, it is also very likely that the aircraft had indeed encountered a change in weather as they flew north. The captain believed that the aircraft was on course and nearing base had just re-taken control of the aircraft when the aircraft struck the ground in the Pennines at 01.41hrs. One of the survivors later wrote a detailed account of this incident and he believed that the altimeter was not reading correctly by the time the aircraft crashed as the air pressure had changed with the change of weather. He also believed that the aircraft was not in level flight as the two pilots switched positions just before the crash and because of this the aircraft had lost height which had initially gone un-noticed, with the aircraft having drifted off course to the west of the Vale of York and over high ground it struck the ground soon afterwards even though the pilot had levelled the aircraft out by the time the crash occurred. One of the survivors believed that the pilot had infact seen the ground he was flying towards and had managed to pull the nose of the aircraft up just before impact.
The two pilots had been killed instantly in the crash, the observer was thrown out of the aircraft, the wireless operator was trapped in the wreckage and as the rear turret had broken away from the crashing aircraft it took with it it's occupant who escaped serious injury. The rear gunner was able to free himself from the turret and found the trapped wireless operator and had freed him. It was some time before the observer was found some distance away from where the aircraft came to a halt. The three survivors located each other but waited at the crash site until first light when they set off down hill, they saw a railway line and made for that and eventually ended up at Dent Station where they were were met by the station master and his wife. The local policeman later took all three survivors to hospital in Kendal where two were soon released. The observer was the more seriously injured although remarkably less injured that could be expected and was then transported to Catterick hopsital where he made a good recovery.
Pilot - P/O Kenneth William Liebeck RCAF (J/4255), aged 23, of Chesley, Ontario, Canada. Buried Leeming Churchyard, North Yorkshire.
Second Pilot - Sgt Gordon Fletcher RAFVR (1008482), aged 22, of Wallasey, Cheshire. Buried Gawber Churchyard, Barnsley, Yorkshire.
Observer - Sgt Lionel Raymond Silver RCAF (R/67529), of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Injured.
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - Sgt John Murray McLaughlan RCAF (R/53875). Injured.
Air Gunner - Sgt Richard Norwood Speer RCAF (R/74357), of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Injured.
P/O Ken Liebeck and his headstone at Leeming Churchyard (pictured above). Kenneth Liebeck was born on 5th January 1918 in Chesley, Ontario, he was the youngest of three sons born to William and Katherine (nee Meyers) Liebeck. He had been an apprentice at the Ontario Apprenticeship Training Programme and working as an auto-mechanic from 1939 to 1940. He left this job to enlist into the RCAF on 22nd June 1940 in Toronoto. He gained his pilot's Wings on 20th February 1941 after training in Canada and received his commission to the rank of P/O two days later, he was posted to the UK soon after. Having trained at 10 OTU he was posted to 10 Squadron on 1st August 1941. The Liebeck family would loose another son just over a year after Kenneth's death when F/O Millard Meyer Liebeck RCAF was lost off Malta, he was thirty one years old and is commemorated on the Malta Memorial having trained as a navigator in December 1942 in Canada. The picture below shows Millard and how alike the two brothers looked.
Richard Norwood Speer was born in Niagara Falls, New York, USA but his family had crossed the Canadian border when he was young and he had attended Lisgar Collegiate, Ottawa. His older brother served in the Canadian Army. Dick Speer was living in Ottawa when he enlisted into the RCAF. After recovering from the injuries sustained in the crash near Dent station he later converted to the Halifax type and was on board 10 Squadron Halifax W7696 on 5th June 1942 on Ops to Essen when the aircraft failed to return. He saw out the War as a PoW, his commission came through soon after he had been reported as missing. I thank his nephew Mr Chris Butters for contacting me in January 2012 and for the photograph of Dick Speer and for the additional information he was kind enough to provide this account.
Ray Silver was born in 1917, prior to enlisting he worked as a newspaper reporter with the Windsor Star, Toronto Daily Star and the Globe & Mail. After training he was posted to 10 Squadron on 19th August 1941. Having survived this accident in the Yorkshire Dales in Summer 1941 he recovered from his injuries and continued his Tour with 10 Squadron. He was later commissioned (J/17558). The squadron later converted to flying to the Halifax type and was still serving with 10 Squadron when he was made a PoW on 31st May 1942 flying Halifax W1042 on Ops to Cologne. The Halifax was shot down by a night fighter and crashed near Eindhoven with the loss of three of his then crew. After the War he returned to Canada and edited a number of newspapers and publications and then owned a PR firm for many years. He wrote a number of papers following the Russian Chernobyl accident. His also wrote his experiences of his War in his book "Last of the Gladiators: A World War II Bomber Navigator's Story" was published by Airlife Publishing Ltd in 1995. He revisited the crash site of Whitley T4234 at least three times before he died in April 2001, during one of the visits he was filmed by a local television company. The photograph of him was found on Facebook of all places.
Gordon Fletcher. I thank his cousin Barrie Railton for this photograph.
John McLaughlan was born on 6th January 1920. He had already completed at least twenty operational flights by the time this incident on Widdale Fell occurred. Sgt McLaughlan survived the crash of 10 Squadron Whitley T4234 on Widdale Fell, near Hawes in 1941 but sustained injuries. He recovered and later converted to fly Halifaxes with 10 Squadron. He was in 10 Squadron Halifax W1045 when it ditched off Devon on return from Ops to Dortmund on 15th April 1942. He was part of a large group of aircrew posted to 10/227 Squadron in North Africa in Summer 1942 and flew there in with OADU in Halifax W7695 but it was forced to ditch off Alexandria on flight to North Africa on 9th July 1942. He later joined to 462 Squadron on its formation also in North Africa later in the year 1942. He received a commission with effect of 17th September 1942 (J/16095). On Christmas Day 1942 462 Squadron received notification that all personnel were to be posted back to the UK as Tour Expired aircrew and after this his later postings are not yet known. Little else is known about him other than he was probably married as the photograph above shows his child. He died in Ottawa on 22nd January 2009.
The location of the actual crash site and where some wreckage was dragged to, then abandoned had been confused in the decades after the crash. A site of wreckage on the Dent side of the hill was a location given in some early books as being the crash location and as a result it was visited by interested people in the 1970s. This is actually where wreckage was dumped and is shown on the photographs as it was in 1975 when Graham Sharpe visited the site (Photo Mr G.Sharpe).
I visited the dump site in May 2006 with my wife and Alan Clark and located small fragments. This photograph shows the exact same area thirty years later when I made a visit to the site.
The aircraft actually crashed around a mile further up the hill where some small fragments still remain. I have yet to visit this area though.
Whitley T4234 was built to contract 38599/39 by Armstrong Whitworth Ltd, at Baginton. On 29th September 1940 it was allotted to 20 MU who received it on 8th October 1940. The aircraft was then taken on charge by 10 Squadron at Leeming on 29th October 1940. It was damaged on 4th January 1941 in an incident at Catterick airfield but no details regarding how this happened are currently known but it can only have sustained minor Cat.A/FB at the very worst. It was repaired on site and returned to 10 Squadron use. On 15th February 1941 following an operational flight to bomb Sterkrade it landed at Dishforth but swung off the runway and the undercarriage collapsed (probably just one of the undercarriage legs). Cat.Ac/FB damage was recorded and it was repaired on site by a team from Armstrong Whitworth Ltd and returned to the unit. On 30th April 1941The aircraft's AM Form 78 has a 43 Group D.A. assessment made but with no date listed. What this relates to is not exactly clear. The aircraft was returned to 10 Squadron on 11th June 1941. As a result of the crash on 23rd August 1941 the aircraft was struck off charge on 31st August 1941. The aircraft was clearly badly damaged but the engines appear to have been less seriously damaged, the RAF accident record card states that they were Cat.R, meaning that usually they would be removed from the crash site and could well have either been used stripped for spares or reconditioned and refitted to other aircraft. Local rumour has it that at least one engine was pushed into a tarn on the hill top but given that they were both assessed and give Cat.R damage this would seem unlikely.