Meteor F.4 VT232 near Girsby.

On 15th November 1954 the pilot of this No.4 Flying Training School aircraft was briefed to undertake a night circuits and landings training exercise. He took off from Middleton St.George airfield at 19.38hrs. After becoming airborne the aircraft should have begun a climbing turn to the left but instead of doing this, this aircraft gradually lost height in the left turn. It then struck the ground at a shallow angle with the port wing down just over a mile from the airfield near Girsby. The crash occurred in a field but exploded and the wreckage was thrown forward over a road and into a wood. The pilot was killed instantly. This was the second Meteor crash in two months within a few hundred yards of each other, Meteor WL343 crashed nearby on 11th September 1954.

A detailed investigation took place and this saw the examination of the engines and associated fuel system. It was felt that at the time of the crash that while the starboard engine was working correctly, the port engine was not producing the same degree of power. Small particles of a foreign body, probably rubber, were found in a fuel filter valve which could have caused a problem with the fuel supply but it was not considered to have been the cause of the crash. The pilot had undertaken single engine daytime flying training previously but it was not possible to safely undertake night single engine flying training. The cause was that he did not appreciate the power loss to the port engine in time to take corrective action. He then lost control while flying with asymmetric power on the engines. Making a turn to port with the port engine failing would have compounded his problem.

Pilot - P/O Richard Anthony Collingwood RAF (4113900), aged 20. Burial location unknown.

Richard Collingwood attended Beaumont College as a boy and was a son of W/Co Wilfred Arthur Denis Collingwood, who, at the time of his son's death was at Halton, Buckinghamshire. Three days before this accident this pilot was involved in a near-miss accident when he forgot to lower the undercarriage of a Meteor on the approach to land at Middleton St.George airfield. He went to make a landing and succeeded in scraping the ventral tank on the runway before realising the error and flying an overshoot.

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