Over the weekend of 23rd and 24rd May 1959 two crop spraying aircraft and pilots based themselves in the Woodland area, near Broughton in Furness, to undertake lime crop spraying work on land
owned by a Mr Hayes, of Middlescough. They initially based themselves in a small field at Woodland but transferred to a larger site across the main A595 road at Wreaks Moss which gave them more room.
On 24th May 1959 this aircraft was attempting to take off from the site with a 4 cwt load of lime but failed to get airborne. The pilot attempted to jettison the load but he could then not stop the
aircraft and it came to rest with a damaged nose, propeller, undercarriage and lower wing. The pilots were employed by Crop Culture (Aerial) Ltd, of Perth, Scotland.
Pilot - Mr Robert Sinclair Milson.
Robert Milson was born in New Zealand. During the Second World War he served in the RNZAF (429356) and flew with 75 Squadron in Bomber Command. He married at Evanton, Scotland in December 1945.
This aircraft was formally an RAF aircraft registered as N5473 but was sold to the civilian market after the war and converted to spray crops. On 19th November 1959 while being flown back to
Cumbria following repair after the damage sustained in this earlier incident it flew into power lines near Ulverston and crashed again. It was again repaired and appears to have crashed in the
Norfolk area in 1963. The photograph of the aircraft shown above was posted to an internet forum by Brian Doherty to whom I credit.
The location of where this incident occurred has not yet been found. If you can assist please contact me
HERE. Thank you.