Mosquito FB.VI TA549 near Thornton le Street.

On Friday, 28th June 1946 this No.13 Operational Training Unit aircraft was being flown by two Czech aircrew on a pilot instructional training flight. The events leading up to it being seen at low level are not yet known, other modern accounts that mention this incident may not be fact and could just be speculation and I would like to see some contemporary records before jumping to conclusions. The aeroplane was seen by people on the ground to be flying normally but very low just above tree-top height over Brawith Hall, which was being used as military hospital at the time. Eyewitnesses stated that they believed it began to break up in the air just prior to it diving into a corn field near Crosby Grange Farm. Two military drivers attached to the hospital witnessed the aircraft fly over the Hall and the crash. They ran down a field and across a stream to the site only to find that a fire was intense and they could not get near it. It appears to me that the aircraft was in a shallow dive and the witnesses to the crash had only seen the final few moments of the flight, th eheight the aircraft had original come from is not yet known. One member of the crew was thrown out on impact and the other was found in the wreckage. Where the crew are now buried is unclear. They are commemorated on the Maidenhead Register in the UK which is for non-Commonwealth foreign nationals who have no grave in the UK. After the war their families had a right to claim their bodies and remove them for reburial in their home country. The Maidenhead Register is their only place of commemoration in the UK. In the case of the two men killed in Mosquito TA549 their bodies were repatriated to Czechoslovakia. Others have previous suggested that they were initially buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey.

Pilot - F/Lt Ladislav Sestak RAFVR (153502), aged? Burial location unknown. Commemorated on the Maidenhead Register. Body re-patriated to the former Czeckoslovakia.

Navigator? - F/Lt Bohumil Volf RAFVR (S/No?), aged 28. Burial location unknown. Commemorated on the Maidenhead Register. Body re-patriated to the former Czeckoslovakia.

Historians Ken Reast, Albert Pitchard and Eric Barton located the crash site with permission from the then landowner back in September 1997, finding small surface wreckage. Ken also photographed a propeller blade recovered from the site in the years after the crash and kept at the farm. I thank Ken for his input in creating this webpage.