Halifax JD320 near Skipwith, Selby.
On 25th July 1943 this Halifax took off from Elvington at 22.42hrs with the crew to set course for Ops to Essen. Soon after taking off both the starboard engines failed and it was thought that the pilot was trying to land the aircraft in a field near Skipwith but struck trees just prior to crash landing. The crew were lucky, they survived but the aircraft caught fire and was destroyed.
A former colleague of mine, Mr John Henley, lived near the site of the crash at the time. He recounted to me that he was at home on the night of this incident and heard the aircraft flying very low nearby and clearly in trouble. After the crash near the farm he recalled that the aircraft had taken the tops off two poplar trees at the end of his farm drive before taking out a telegraph pole and crashing in an adjacent field and burning out. He recalls that the owner of a house at the corner of the field where the aircraft came down was forced to leave his house for the night due to bullets exploding. The bomb load was removed the next day, taken further into the field, put into a large hole in the ground and blown up. The young Mr Henley and his family had to take cover some distance away but he saw shrapnel whizz over his head from a mile away. Wreckage from the aircraft remained in the field for some time but was later taken away. The crew are believed to have escaped with only minor injuries although one of the crew could well have sustained injuries that cut short his flying, detailed below.
Pilot - Sgt D A R King RNZAF.
Navigator - Sgt T W Hill (probably Sgt Thomas William Hill RAFVR (1040830)).
Flight Engineer - Sgt Arnold Richard Downes RAFVR (1464831), of Hackney, London.
? - Sgt A J Birch.
? - F/O George Albert Renshaw RAFVR (129484).
? - Sgt T W G Terry.
? - Sgt Charles William George Graham RAFVR (1377569), of East Barnet, Hertfordshire.
? - Sgt Dennis Frank Holway RAFVR (813075), of Taunton, Somerset.
Arnold Downes was born in Hackney, London in 1920, he was sadly killed flying in Halifax JD465 on 24th August 1943 when
the aircraft crashed near Biesenthal on Ops to Berlin.
Charles Graham was commissioned on 7th January 1944 to P/O on probation (emergency). He was lost without trace on 20th February 1944 when Halifax LL143 never returned from Ops to Leipzig. He was thirty three years old.
George Renshaw received his commission on 18th September 1942 to P/O on probation (emergency), rising to F/O on probation (war subs) on 19th March 1943 and F/Lt (war subs) on 17th September 1944. He relinquished his rank of F/Lt on 13th July 1945 on the grounds of medical unfitness. He could well have sustained injuries in the accident to JD320 as recorded above and having not regained fitness to continue his RAF service his commission was relinquished (pure supposition by this researcher however).
Dennis Holway was born in Taunton, Somerset in 1918. He received his commission on 8th August 1944 to the rank of P/O on probation (emergency), rising to F/O (war subs) on 8th February 1945. He married in Bristol in 1946 and died in Bath in 1971.
The "Sgt T W Hill" listed above was probably one F/Sgt Thomas William Hill RAFVR (1040830), if so then he was posted to 166 Squadron and later killed in action on 8th June 1944 flying in Lancaster DV367 on Ops to Versailles. Every member of this crew were either DFC or DFM holders but their awards did not appear in the London Gazette until 25th January 1946. F/Sgt Hill DFM was thirty three years old. I thank his grandson-in-law, Mr David Sankey, for contacting me in December 2011.