During the afternoon of 11th December 1950 this Central Gunnery School was flown on a drogue towing flight which would have seen the aircraft flown off the Yorkshire coast and the drogue be fired at by another aircraft. The Martinet almost certainly had reached the coast and had probably undertaken some of the drogue operation by the time the weather changed and the crew were recalled to base. The pilot entered the landing circuit at Leconfield but with the visibility substantially reduced. At 15.25hrs it was roughly north of the airfield awaiting clearance to land when the pilot of a Spitfire carried out a slow roll at the same height as the Martinet and near it. The Martinet pilot took violent evasive action, completely lost control and dived on to the railway line half a mile north of Arram. Both pilot and drogue operator were killed in the crash.
An investigation was carried out and concluded the main cause of the crash was the pilot held no instrument rating. He had been given just ninety five minutes continuation training in the previous year and five hours with a flying instructor. It was felt that the pilot may have been able to recover the aircraft from the spin if he had been given more recent experience and training. Those in command at the Central Gunnery School were held to blame for this and posted away from the unit. The pilot of the Spitfire, F/O Schofield, was interviewed and stated that he was flying at 3,500 feet (which appears to have been higher than the height at which a circuit would have been flown) and while the available information doesn't state it, it may well be that the Martinet pilot was flying much higher than perhaps should have been in the circuit.
Pilot - F/Sgt Philip Harold Draper RAF (936710), aged 29. Buried Leconfield Cemetery, Yorkshire.
Drogue Operator - LAC Denis Salter RAF (2299998), aged 22. Buried Hull Northern Cemetery, Yorkshire (Comp.196.43).
Philip Draper's parents ran the Manchester Hotel, on New Queen's Street, Scarborough. He had served in Bomber Command during the Second World War with 83 Squadron but had spent some years as a PoW following being shot down over Germany on 26th June 1941 in Hampden AD835, in which he was the sole survivor. He was married with a young daughter and lived in the camp married quarters at Leconfield.