Meteor T.7 WH190 near Muston.
During the morning of Monday, 27th August 1954 the pilot of this No.8 Flying Training School aircraft was undertaking a training formation flying exercise with two other Meteors. The aircraft took off from Driffield and after climbing to 20,000 feet in altitude they begun the exercise. An instructor led the formation with two pupils flying in the aircraft behind formating on the first. Some time later this aircraft broke away from formation and went into a vertical dive. What actually happened to cause this to happen was never discovered but it was clear that the pilot had lost control because at 4,000 feet he attempted to bale out. Unfortunately his parachute rip cord caught on part of the canopy on his way out and deployed too early at high speed, this caused the parachute to tear in a number of places which wasn't his only problem. He wasn't wearing his own parachute harness which did not fit correctly so that on his descent his shoulders fell out of the loose fittings harness and left him descending head first. Owing to the parachute then not working properly he was then killed on striking the ground and his body was found lying on the Scarbrough to Filey railway line. The aircraft partly came out of the dive and crashed on farmland to the north of Muston at 11.00hrs, twenty five minutes into the flight. The Scarborough fire engine attempted to attend to the crash site and tipped over when it ran into a ditch while being driven down the lane to the crash site. One of the aircraft's engines broke off on impact and struck a tree (shown in the photograph below) damaging it. The other engine continued over a further field before coming to rest in the River Hertford. An investigation was carried out and recommended that pilots should ensure they wear their own harnesses, something which may have occurred in this case.
Pilot - P/O Edmund Peter Aston RAF (3515081), aged 23. Buried High Hoyland Churchyard, Yorkshire.
I located the site on a very cold January day in 2009 with air historians Eric Barton, Albert Pritchard and Ken Reast through talking to Muston landowner Mr Winter. The site is on very wet ground and whilst a handful of pieces were found, being able to see any writing any of them to be able to identify anything was not possible. The aircraft had just missed houses in Muston and crashed a couple of hundred yards from the village. Mr Lee Norgate of Filey had carried a similar investigation in the years before our visit and recorded his finds in his superb self-published booklet.
The closest we came to a piece with any lettering on. I would like to thank Mr Winter of Muston for allowing my visit and for recounting his memories of the incident.
Edmund Aston received a short service commission on 27th May 1953 (with his period of service to count from 14th January 1953) to Acting P/O on probation. He was graded as a P/O on 24th March 1954. I thank his cousin Mr Michael Swallow for contacting me in September 2014. He had attended Barnsley Holgate Grammar School and had been a member of the ATC as a boy. Prior to joining the RAF around seven years before his death he had worked for Brooks Motors Ltd, Barnsley.
