On 7th August 1952 the two airmen on this aircraft were undertaking a daytime training exercise and had taken off from Leeming at 13.28hrs. The nature of the training flight is not yet known but there was an instructor flying with a student. The aircraft was returning from the training flight with it's undercarriage down and was under control of Leeming's tower to make a ground controlled approach to land. The training flight could actually have been to practice such landings. The ground controller gave the aircraft a course to steer and it began to let down through cloud with the aim of landing. By this stage radio contact was lost with the aircraft and almost certainly without warning the aircraft crashed into high ground to the north of Leyburn, in the region of Bellerby Moor and was destroyed sadly killing the crew of two. The crash investigation found the probable cause was that the ground controller was following the wrong blip on his radar screen and thus assumed that this blip was WF793. This second aircraft was making a landing approach to either Topcliffe or Dishforth and was flying roughly the same direction. The ground controller was blamed for the crash and removed from such duties. I have yet to locate the crash site though it is probably within the military training area and access is therefore limited.
Instructor Pilot - Master Pilot Jan Pawlikowski RAF (792811), aged 38, of Lodz, Poland. Buried Leeming Churchyard, Yorkshire.
Student Pilot - P/O Stanley Edwin Hunt RAF (3111951), aged 23, of Preston, Lancashire. Buried Aldershot Cemetery, Hampshire.
Jan Pawlikowski's grave at Leeming. He was born on 19th June 1914 in Lodz, Poland. He had been a pilot with 307 Night-Fighter Squadron during the War.
Stanley Hunt was born on 17th October 1929. It is possible that he was Cranwell-trained and received a short service commission as P/O on 5th December 1951, with his period of service to count from 18th September 1950.