During the evening of 1st January 1943 the crew of this aircraft and at least one other took off from Wigtown airfield to undertake night navigation training flights, the
last wireless communication with the crew of this aircraft was received at 19.00hrs and after this time nothing from the aircraft was heard. At the time of creating this
webpage the route the crew were following for the training flight is not known and when this aircraft failed to return to Wigtown following the training exercise a search
was begun over land by other aircraft and a sea search was carried out over the intended route but nothing was found. One of the crash reports sourced in compiling this
webpage was the AM Form 765c and states that it was assumed the aircraft had crashed before 22.10hrs but it is not yet known why this precise time was stated. This form
is dated 5th January 1943 and on that date nothing was known of where the aircraft had crashed. It was probably assumed that the aircraft had crashed at sea and both the
aircraft and crew were initially recorded simply as missing. That probably ended the formal search and the families were notified to the effect that all were missing,
believed killed.
What actually occurred is not known, however it is easy to speculate that the aircraft drifted too far east in a snow storm and was simply not flying high enough
when it crashed or that the aircraft had suffered the effects of icing conditions on the surface of the aircraft and lost height before hitting the ground. The aircraft
had flown into a steep grassy fellside of Frozen Fell in the Uldale Fells area to the north of Keswick and then almost certainly the wreckage then fell down into an
offshoot of Frozenfell Gill and was virtually hidden. Even today this part of the Lake District is one of the lesser visited parts of the National Park and combined with
it being Winter there would be little chance of anyone coming across the wrecked aircraft by chance. There was also probably less of a chance of anyone even being up in
these fells at this time of year during the war and it may also have been quickly covered over with snow. Another aircraft also taking part in the same training exercise
would crash in the High Pike area of the Caldbeck Fells on the same night with one of the crew of Anson W2629 being killed and others sustaining varying degrees of injury.
It was not until 29th January 1943 when members of the Army Driving and Maintainance School based at Portinscale were on exercise in the Skiddaw area noticed pieces of
yellow painted wood floating down stream and notified an RAF working party of 83 MU were at the crash site of Hurricane AF959 (which was also not found for a week).
The senior officer at the time at the Hurricane crash site formed a
search party and located the wreckage of what was then identified to be Anson AX145 on Frozen Fell. The bodies of all five airmen were recovered and funerals of three of
the men were held at Silloth on 2nd February 1943. The party that visited the site reported that three of the crew may have survived the initial crash but died through
exposure as well as their injuries though their deaths are all recorded as being on 1st January 1943. The crash site appears to have been very well cleared at the
time and very little remains today to mark the site.
Pilot - P/O William Basil Cheale Thompson RCAF (J/16171), aged 21, of Moosomin, Saskatchewan, Canada. Buried Causewayhead Cemetery, Silloth, Cumbria.
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - P/O Bruce Oswald Bown RAAF (413950), aged 30, of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia. Buried Causewayhead Cemetery, Silloth, Cumbria.
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - Sgt George David Singleton RAFVR (1257904), aged 21, of Hampton Hill, Middlesex. Buried Hampton Hill Churchyard, Middlesex.
Navigator - Sgt Edwin Omer Knight RAAF (414574), aged 21, of Oxley, Queensland, Australia. Buried Causewayhead Cemetery, Silloth, Cumbria.
Navigator (U/T) - P/O William Burt RAFVR (129765), aged 21, of Edinburgh, Scotland. Buried Annan Cemetery, Dumfriesshire.
Bruce Bown was born on 27th October 1912 in Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia. He married his wife Winifred, of Kew, Victoria, Australia in December 1936 and also had a
young son who was born in September 1939. When he enlisted into the RAAF in Sydney on 10th October 1941 he was working as a salesman. He passed his wireless operating
and air gunnery courses in Australia and received his commission to the rank of P/O on 23rd July 1942, he then embarked for the UK the following day arriving in the UK
in November 1942. He was posted to No.1 (O)AFU on 24th December 1942 and was only there for a matter of days before he died as a result of the accident to Anson AX145
in the Lake District on 1st January 1943.
Edwin Knight was born on 14th January 1921 in Beenleigh, Queensland, Australia to William George Knight, of Oxley, Queensland, Australia. At the time of enlisting
into the RAAF on 12th October 1941 in Brisbane he was working at a sawmill at Corinda, Brisbane. After basic training in Australia he embarked from Melbourne in May
1942 for Canada where he gained his air navigator badge on 9th October 1942. He was posting at No.1 (O)AFU on 30th November 1942 on arrival in the UK.
William Thompson was born on 27th June 1921 to William Cheale and Edith Thompson in Moosomin, Saskatchewan. He was working at his family farm in Moosomin when he
enlisted into the RCAF in April 1941 in Winnipeg. He married Doris Barry, of North Finchley, Middlesex prior to his death. Thompson Creek in Saskatchewan is named in
his honour. The photograph of him shown above was found on "http://svwm.ca/".
William Burt was the son of William Burt MA and Caroline J Burt (nee Richardson). He is buried in a family plot of his mother's family in Annan Cemetery. William
Burt received a commission on 28th August 1942 to the rank of P/O on probation (emergency). Nothing more is known about him or Sgt George Singleton.
Frozen Fell is the area of hillside just to the right of centre shown in the photograph above, Anson AX145 crashed in the gully in the dead centre of the photograph
just below the horizon. Burntod Gill is the stream running up the right side of Frozen Fell and Wellington T2714 crashed at the top of this stream in February 1942.
Myself and Ade Harris visited the site on the eve of the seventieth anniversary of the crash. Ade has spent many weeks in the Uldale and Caldbeck Fells attempting to
locate the missing crash sites which are believed to be there somewhere. Using a whole host of information found at the former Millom Museum/Gilbert Rothery Archives,
and from myself, historian Alan Clark and the RAAF casualty file to get close to where AX145 crashed he found small fragments of the aircraft in the stream that leads
down from Frozen Fell and other tiny parts in rocks at either side of the stream in November 2012. The photograph above shows the general area of the crew which was just
above the waterfall visible. The photograph below shows a more close up of the crash site. The aircraft believed to have crashed into this small waterfall or slightly
to the right of it where many of the finds shown below were located. The crashed aircraft must have been discovered in this gully below the waterfall as the fellside is
too steep to have prevented it rolling downhill.
A selection of small fragments located at the crash site in 2012 including part of the glass front from a flying instrument and the "push" part of a switch.
A further view of the "push" part of a switch and identical to engine start switches previously found at other crash sites.
Anson AX145 was delivered new to No.1 A.O.S. on 17th October 1941. On 4th November 1941 it received minor Cat.Ac damage that was repaired on site and it was returned to 1 A.O.S. on 16th December 1941. The aircraft was struck off charge on 3rd January 1943 following the crash on 1st January 1943.
