On 7th August 1952 the two airmen on this aircraft were undertaking a daytime training exercise with No.228 Operational Conversion Unit and had taken off from Leeming at 13.28hrs. The nature of the training flight is not yet known but in the cockpit was an instructor flying with a student. With the exercise nearing completion it was flying with the undercarriage down and was under control of Leeming's tower to make a ground controlled approach to land. The training flight could actually have been to practice such landings. The ground controller gave the aircraft a course to steer and it began to let down through cloud with the aim of landing. By this stage radio contact was lost with the aircraft and almost certainly without warning the aircraft crashed into high ground to the north of Leyburn, in the region of Bellerby Moor and was destroyed sadly killing the crew of two. The crash investigation found the probable cause was that the ground controller was following the wrong blip on his radar screen and thus assumed that this blip was WF793. This second aircraft was making a landing approach to either Topcliffe or Dishforth and was flying roughly the same direction. The ground controller was blamed for the crash and removed from such duties. The crash site is probably within the military training area.

Instructor Pilot - Master Pilot Jan Pawlikowski RAF (792811), aged 38. Buried Leeming Churchyard, Yorkshire.

Student Pilot - P/O Stanley Edwin Hunt RAF (3111951), aged 23. Buried Aldershot Cemetery, Hampshire.

Jan Pawlikowski's grave at Leeming. He was born on 19th June 1914 in Lodz, Poland. He had been a pilot with 307 Night-Fighter Squadron during the War.