On 16th April 1944 the crew of this aircraft had taken off from Crosby on Eden, near Carlisle at around 08.55hrs to undertake a training flight. The weather must have been poor when they took off as twenty minutes into the flight the aircraft flying in poor visibility. The poor visibility had probably prevented the pilot from seeing the high ground south of Carlisle, descending to try and get below the level of the cloud the aircraft then flew into rising ground as it neared the much higher ground of the northern Lake District. The aircraft narrowly missed an evacuee school boy who was stood at the corner of the field near Waverhead Farm, Caldbeck. On hitting the ground it cartwheeled up the field and broke up, the crew were probably thrown out of the aircraft as it crashed and then part of the wreckage then caught fire. Despite the severe damage the accident card, the AM1180, states that the tail of the aircraft was found to be totally intact. The pilot sadly died as a result of this accident while the navigator somehow survived though he is yet to be fully identified. This aircraft crashed around 200 metres outside what became the Lake District National Park boundary, I have included it in the list of all known National Park accidents because before the site was found there is no proper record to say whether it had crashed inside or outside the National Park.
Pilot - Sgt Georges Torres FAFL (30714), aged 21. Of France. Buried Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey.
Navigator - Sgt Ash. (Possibly Sgt Cyril Ash RAFVR (1490714)). Injured.
Georges Torres was born on 8th August 1922 and joined the FAFL in April 1941. He was training to become a Coastal Command pilot at the time of the accident near Caldbeck. Sgt Georges Torres was buried in the French section at Brookwood Cemetery. Research credit to www.francaislibres.net. Gravestone photograph credit to Bill Nicholls.
Ade Harris, Mark Sheldon and I visited the crash site in May 2016 and small fragments of the aircraft were found in the field where it crashed which confirmed the crash location. My thanks to Ms.B.Bell for allowing our visit.
In the photograph above are shown various small parts including part of the compass, a flying instrument, the cockpit heating control label, and a fuse service pack. Below is a small part with a Beaufighter part number.
An engine cowl cooling gill and the part number assossiated with it.
