I like to do each incident justice be creating a detailed webpage from information I am able to locate. In general terms no one has ever linked all the tit-bits of contemporary information together to form accounts as I am doing but in this case, the pilot's grandson has already done a very good job of researching and publicising this incident and his grandfather's life I do not wish to simply copy from his research. The basics of the incident are as follows.
On Saturday, 12th May 1917 this aeroplane was to be test flown by a test pilot of The Blackburn Aeroplane and Motor Company Ltd. It had been constructed at the "Olympia Works" factory but the company used Soldiers' Field in Roundhay Park as their flying site test fly the aeroplanes that they had built. Word got around the local area when flying was due to take place with Blackburn's test pilot often undertaking more than just simple flying tests; he often looped areoplanes in what was termed "fancy flying" by locals despite the strains and stresses imposed by the manoeuvres. Many thousands of people came to watch the flights to be entertained. At 18.00hrs the flight began and he flew normally over Roundhay Park, he then moved away from the crowds, climbed to around 1500 feet and over Oakwood to attempt various loops and steep turns. While making a loop the stresses to the airframe caused one of the wings to collapse. The pilot lost control and it dived into the ground killing the pilot instantly. It either crashed directly onto or very close to an iron fence that divided a field to a footpath called Loner's Lane, which, at that time joined Oakwood Grange Lane to North Lane. A fire broke out as a result of the crash but the pilot appears to have been thrown out of the cockpit on impact and while he was killed in the crash he landed on the metal boundary fence. His body was recovered from the burning wreckage by a local doctor, Major Secker-Walker RAMC, who carried it to his nearby home at Oakwood Grange.
The small piece of land on which the aeroplane crashed is now on the corner of Tatham Way. A reasonably new house has been built on the garden of a larger property and what was probably the surviving metal fence was removed around 2017. Various memorials to Rowland Ding were erected at or close to the crash site. At least two memorials in the form of propellers were erected on some plinths at the site but both were removed, though one turned up in a pub in Leeds and was last seen at the Leeds Industrial Museum, Armley. A brass plaque was attached to the gates of the Olympia Works but went missing when the factory moved in 1946. A memorial stone with a metal plaque was placed at the crash site on the hundredth anniversary of the accident.
Pilot - Mr William Rowland Ding, aged 31. Buried St Peter Churchyard, Papworth Everard, Cambridgeshire.
Rowland Ding was born on 19th August 1885 at Alsager, Cheshire. He married Victoria Mason in Wandsworth, London in 1907 and his son Denis was born in Birmingham in 1913. He was awarded his Royal Aero Club Aviators' Certificate (Cert.No.774) on 27th April 1914 following training at the Beatty School, Hendon flying a Wright Biplane. On 30th July 1914 he crash landed the Handley Page Type G at Northallerton carnival sustaining head injuries to himself. He managed the Northern Aircraft Company, Newcastle before the outbreak of the First World War. In early 1915 they took over the Lakes Flying Company sheds at Windermere with Ding being appointed as managing director and chief instructor for the floatplane flying school that operated on the lake. He later moved to work for Blackburns as their chief test pilot. There were probably other minor mishaps that have yet to be researched. On 15th April 1917 he crashed the Blackburn White Falcon in Roundhay Park when left with little option but to crash land when members of the public entered the flying site and were in the way on his approach to land. He was then killed on 12th May 1917 at Oakwood. He was thirty one years old. A large crowd gathered for Rowland Ding's funeral at Lawnswood Cemetery, Leeds. He was possibly then cremated there before being interred at St.Peter's Church, Papworth Everard, Cambridgeshire.