On 21st October 1993 the crew in this 43 Squadron aircraft were undertaking a training exercise with three other aircraft when this aircraft suffered a major fuel leak over the Western side of the UK. The crew were then attempting to fly back to Leeming to effect a landing but they were forced to gain height to clear the Pennines and applied power to the engines. When power was applied the escaping fuel caught fire. Having directed the aircraft away from the main A66 road they were following they ejected safely and the aircraft was destroyed in the resulting crash not far from the A66 on Stainmore.
Pilot - F/Lt L Taylor RAF. Uninjured.
Navigator - F/Lt Stuart John MacDonald Walker RAF (8029170L), of London. Uninjured.
Stuart Walker was appointed to a permenant commission in the RAF as Acting P/O on 8th May 1986, he was re-graded to the rank of P/O exactly a year later and rose to F/O on 8th May 1988 and later to F/Lt on 8th December 1991. Having survived this ejection in October 1993 F/Lt Walker was sadly killed in the crash of 43 Squadron Tornado ZH558 on 8th July 1994 when it crashed into the sea off Cyprus while flying back to Akrotiri following a gunnery exercise. He was thirty two years old. His body was taken back to Leuchars where he is buried at St.Michaels Cemetery. He was born on 8th September 1961 in London. Only one Tornado had been lost in between the ZE858 and ZH558.
The photograph above shows the general area of the crash site on Stainmore which just inside the Durham side of the border and the site is marked by a good selection of aviation historians on the photograph below, the closeness of the crash site to the A66 marked by the lorries beyond.
The deep crater created by the crash was backfilled but a few small fragments of the aircraft can still be seen on the surface where the grass had not fully recovered.
Various parts of this aircraft found their way into a surplus store in Darlington, via a scrap yard in Thirsk from RAF Leeming where the wreckage was recovered to. The items pictured above were bought by Mr Andy Hunter and show both parachute containers from Tornado ZE858 used in the ejections. The makers plate shown below is on one of these containers. My thanks to Mr Hunter for supplying these photographs. ZE858 was the first Tornado that 25 Squadron received on 15th December 1988 before being transferred to 43 Squadron.
