Wellington HE688 near Osmotherley, Northallerton.
On the 23rd March 1944 this Wellington took off from Silverstone airfield for an evening cross country training exercise
at 19.15hrs and headed north. Whilst over the Northallerton area control of the aircraft was lost after the port
engine failed and the aircraft went into a dive, while trying the pull the aircraft out of the dive the aircraft
began to break up and it crashed into the ground at a near vertical angle at 21.05hrs near Little Beech Hill,
west of Osmotherley and all six airmen were killed in the crash. It was found that none had their parachutes
attached prior to the crash. The three Commonwealth airmen were buried at Harrogate with RAF Leeming's Padre
officiating.
Pilot - F/O Edward N J Thomson RNZAF (416552), aged 21, Titirangi, Auckland, New Zealand. Buried Harrogate Stonefall Cemetery, Yorkshire.
Nav - F/Sgt Bertram J Jones RAAF (424299), aged 21, of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Buried Harrogate Stonefall Cemetery, Yorkshire.
Air Gunner - Sgt David L Watson RAAF (430076), aged 20, of East St. Kilda, Victoria, Australia. Buried Harrogate Stonefall Cemetery, Yorkshire.
W Op/ Air Gunner - Sgt Ernest P Moore RAFVR (1586101), aged 20, of Portslade, Sussex. Buried Portslade Cemetery, Sussex.
Air Gunner - Sgt Dennis G Stephens RAFVR (3011102), aged 19, of Stand, Lancashire. Buried Stand Churchyard, Lancashire. He had until recently been an ATC member.
Air Gunner - Sgt Benjamin Woodhead RAFVR (1685947), aged 21, of Lower Broughton, Salford, Lancashire. Buried Agecroft Cemetery, Salford, Lancashire.
F/Sgt Bertram Jones. My thanks to Mr Peter Jones of Australia for this photograph of his uncle. Bertram was married to
Olive Jones and they lived at Kensington, New South Wales. His parents however lived in Sydney. He was born on the
23rd of December 1922 and prior to enlisting he was a welfare officer, he enlisted in Sydney on the 17th August 1942.
His Uncle James Bertram Jones was killed in September 1917 at Ypres.
Edward Thomson's grave at Harrogate Stonefall Cemetery.
David Watson was born on 2nd September 1923 and was a law student prior to enlisting
in Melbourne. His father Major C E Watson MC and died of an illness.
These photographs show the general area for where the aircraft is thought to have crashed. Air historians
Ken Reast, Albert Pritchard and Dick Barton located the crash site in the mid-1990's with assistance from the
land owner and afew small peices were found at the site.
Following a phone call to an elderly Osmotherley resident in 2004 he stated that an unknown type of aircraft,
he believed, had clipped Thimbleby Moor, near the Chequers Inn on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors
but had not crashed> In his words it remained in the air loosing peices as
it went, only to crash in vertually the exact same place as where this Wellington came down. While there is no mention HE688
clipping the ground in the crash report it could be that the aircraft did indeed begin to break some distance away and only
when this reached a critical level did the crash occur.