Mosquito RR286 in Stillington Park.

During the morning of 15th June 1946 the crew on this aircraft were undertaking single engined flying practice. Forty eight minutes into the flight the port engine had been feathered but when the engine was unfeathered as part of the training the engine failed to pick up. As the aircraft was flying low at the time and I suspect it was on its way back to base, the pilot had no height available to do anything but belly-land the aircraft. At 09.43hrs the aircraft was force-landed in a carrot field near Stillington, and within ground then part of Stillington Park. Both airmen were uninjured and the aircraft sustained Cat.B damage and was taken away and later repaired.

Pilot - S/Ldr Hugh Aitchison Green Smith RAFVR (41622). Uninjured.

Pilot - F/Lt Durrant RAF. Uninjured.

Hugh Smith received his commission to the rank of P/O in 1939 (there are too many "Smiths" to search through in Flight Magazine archives for his commission to the rank of Acting P/O on probation). He was graded as P/O on probation on 3rd September 1939 and P/O on 31st October 1939. He rose to F/O on 3rd September 1940 and to F/Lt (war subs) exactly a year later but transferred to the Reserve on 31st October 1942. He relinquished his commission of S/Ldr in the Reserve of Air Force Officers on 27th June 1947, on appointment to the reconstituted RAFVR but dropped a rank having taken his war substantive rank of F/Lt but with it converted to a substantive rank. In December 1947 this notification was cancelled and it is not known whether he remained in the Air Force after this date.
F/Lt Durrant's full identity is not yet known.

In July 2011 I met with Stillington resident Mr John Swallow who remembered this incident occuring, he kindly took me to the crash site and gave me a peice of the aircraft that was left behind after the RAF cleared the site. The aircraft crashed into the field in the photograph shown above coming to rest in the foreground.

The large part was found at the site at the time of the incident and had been in his farm buildings ever since, one end of the tube was removed some years ago and used for another purpose on his farm but the remaining section is in good condition. After light cleaning the Mosquito part number sequence stands out reasonably well and shows the DH.98 Mosquito "G98" prefix; the letter "G" refers to the item being part of the Mosquito undercarriage.

Mosquito RR286 was built to contract 1576/SAS/C.23(a) by D.H. Aircraft Ltd, at Leavesden and was awaiting collection in January 1945. After a short period of MU storage it was taken on charge by 54 OTU at Church Fenton when the unit started to re-equip on 7th February 1945. On 1st November 1945 it moved with the unit to East Moor. On 15th June 1946 it suffered the landing accident near Stillington as recorded above and initially was assessed on site and declared repairable with Cat.B/FA but later because of surplus of aircraft in the initial Post-War period it was Re-Cat.E2/FA and scrapped without repair being carried out.