On 20th January 1956 the crew of this 58 Squadron aircraft took off at 10.50hrs from their base at Wyton, near Huntingdon to carrying out a photographic reconnaissance flight to take official photographs of the Windscale and Calder Hall (now Sellafield) atomic plants for a Government department. The crew and were to make series of low passes of the atomic sites at around 1,000ft. The Canberra was seen by people on the ground to circle the Calder Hall area for some time before it struck the ground which would suggest that the crew had already made a number of these photographic passes. While lining up for a pass of the sites it was thought that the aircraft had been flown slightly too far inland and towards high ground which was covered by cloud. Just before noon and while making a turn a wing struck the ground on Ponsonby Fell, north of Gosforth and the aircraft disintergrated. Local people who witnessed the aircraft just before it crashed were quoted in local newspapers as believing that the aircraft's engines were failing and that the pilot was attempting to find somewhere to land at the time of the crash. The accident investigation believed that this was not the case and that it simply wasn't flying high enough in the proximity of high ground.
Pilot - F/O William Falconer Wilfred Ninian Gough RAF (2548944), aged 23. Buried Houghton & Wyton Cemetery, Cambridgeshire.
Navigator - F/O Douglas Cornforth RAF (579827), aged 28. Buried Weeton Churchyard, Lancashire.
William Gough was born on 7th June 1932 and was the son of Wilfrid and Isabel (nee ?) Gough. His family lived at Cranbrook, Kent. Cadet William Gough received a commission to the rank of Acting P/O on probation on 21st October 1953 (with his period of eight years service on the active list starting from 17th June 1953). He was confirmed his the rank and graded as P/O on 21st October 1954 and later promoted to F/O on 21st October 1955.
I may not have documented Douglas Cornforth correctly. He was born on 9th November 1927 at Redcar, North Yorkshire and was the son of Jack and Mrs (nee Gould) Cornforth. I think that he was probably the son of John William (Jack) and May (nee Gould) Cornforth. John was born at Coxwold while May was born at Masham, they married and their first two children was born at Kilburn (including a Jack in 1912 who was their eldest child), their third child was born at Richmond before they moved to Redcar and had several more children (probably) including Douglas in 1927. May Cornforth would have been around 47 years old in 1927. Jack (Jnr) is on the 1939 Register as married but as having no children plus he was would be just 15 in 1927 if he was Douglas' father. John William and May are on the 1939 Census living at Felixkirk and three of their children were with them but the younger of these has their name redacted in the Ancestry image though I suspect this was Douglas. John William worked as a builder or mason and moved with work. Douglas received a commission to the rank of Acting P/O on probation on 4th August 1953 (with his period of eight years service on the active list starting from 6th May 1953). He was confirmed the rank and graded as P/O on 17th September 1954 and later promoted to F/O on 17th September 1955. His father was also in the RAF when Douglas was killed and gave his address of Fleet, Hampshire.
Canberra WT505 crashed into the hills shown on the photograph above, as seen from the higher fells to the east.
A general view of the crash site from the summit of Ponsonby Fell.
Ade Harris and I located the crash site in April 2019. The aircraft initially made contact with the ground a few hundred metres south of the summit of Ponsonby Fell and broke up across grass fellside. A stone wall a few hundred metres into the disintergration appears to have brought all but the bulky items in the aircraft to a halt and a few pieces of the aircraft were located in the wall.
Markings on the lower item, possibly an instrument or cockpit switch.