Mustang at Haxby and Clifton Airfield.

On the 24th of April 1944 this Mustang hit high tension cables near Haxby, to the north of York, the collision brought down a pylon which blocked the Scarborough to York railway line in both directions. The aircraft remained airbourne and made it back to Clifton where the pilot crash landed the aircraft. Clifton's ORB for this date list a Mustang as force-landing on the airfield at 09.00 hrs "trailing 20 yards of HT cable from a wing". The aircraft was damaged in the incident and was originally declared Cat.B/FA but this may have been lowered to Cat.A(c)/FA.

The aircraft was built by North American at Inglwewood/Dallas to Purchase Contract 15471 and delivered by sea to the UK, arriving in the UK in March 1942. After erection and acceptance at MU it was issued to 239 Sqdn at Gatwick in May 1942 when the unit converted from Hurricane IIc's to Mustang I's. It then moved with the unit to various airfields during 1942 (Detling on 19th May, Gatwick on 31st May, Twinwood Farm on 30th August, Cranfield on 21st October, Odiham on 18th November, Hurn on 6th December). On an as yet unspecified date in early 1943 it was transferred to 4 Sqdn at Clifton and then shortly afterwards to the newly formed 430 Sqdn RCAF at Hartford Bridge where the unit worked up to operational readiness before moving to Gatwick. The unit was rested from Ops. and moved to Clifton on 9th February 1944 where it suffered this Cat. B/FA mishap on 24th February 1944. It was repaired in works and on completion of repair it was issued to 168 Sqdn at Odiham in April 1944 from where it took part in D-Day operations. The unit moved to France in June 1944, firstly to Sommervieu on 29th June, then to St.Horrine on 14th August, then on 1st September 1944 the unit moved to Avrilly and on 20th September to Diest/Schaffen. The aircrafts final base was Eindhoven, where it moved on 2nd October 1944. It was struck off charge on inspection 12th December 1944.

Pilot - unknown.