On Friday, 3rd May 1918 this aeroplane had been flown for forty five minutes prior to the eventual accident occurring. During the flight the aeroplane was being flown at around three hundred feet the engine was shut off and the aeroplane began to spin. It was seen to dive for some height and the pilot began to pull out of the dive but by the time it began to pull out of the dive it was too close to the ground. There was not enough height for the pilot to regain control before it struck the ground near Redcar killing the two airmen flying in it. The unit both men were flying with was the Instructor School. Lt Rice was undertaking flying instructor training and 2Lt King was an assistant instructor at the training unit.
Pilot (pupil) - Lt Edmund Gabriel Rice RAF, aged 18. Buried London Road Cemetery, Coventry.
Pilot / Passenger (instructor) - 2Lt Lionel Richard Thacker King MiD RAF, aged 26. Buried West Kirby Churchyard, Cheshire.
Edmund Rice was born in Hampstead, London on 3rd June 1899 and attended Wolverhampton Grammar School and later Bedale School. He was the son of Dr Charles Emmanuel Rice. He was granted a commission in the RNAS on 8th July 1917, following training at Crystal Palace and Manston he was posted to France between December 1917 and March 1918. In March 1918 he was flying an aeroplane on a scouting flight when he passed out at around 18,000ft, it entered a dive from which he came round in time to pull out of and land safely but he was posted back to England. He was assessed and then taken off high altitude flying. The RNAS became part of the RAF when it formed on 1st April 1918. He was assigned to instructional duties and was posted to the Instructor School at Redcar on 29th April 1918 to undertake training.
Lionel Thacker King was born on 22nd November 1891 in the Wirral, Cheshire where his father, a doctor of medicine was probably practicing at the time. He enlisted into The King's Liverpool Regiment in August 1914 and served in France from November 1915 until 1917 when he was invalided back to England. He then transferred to the RNAS, being granted a commission on 11th November 1917. He was posted to what was then the RNAS Flying School at Redcar on 20th March 1918. He was still there when the RAF formed in April 1918 and the RNAS Flying School became the RAF Instructor School. He was Mentioned in Despatches on an unknown date.
His parents, Dr Richard Thacker King MD and Mary Louisa King, of Sandfield House, West Kirby, had already lost one son; 2Lt Sydney William Thacker King, of 4th Bn Cheshire Regiment died on 10th August 1915, who's body was never found and he was commemorated on the Helles Memorial in Turkey, he was twenty years old. Lionel Thacker King was to be their second son who would loose his life prematurely. Their older brother Cpt George Charles King MiD, Royal Army Medical Corps died of pneumonia on 4th July 1921 at the age of thirty five. He is also buried in the same grave in West Kirby Churchyard. In the space of six years their parents had lost three sons. Their father Dr Thacker King died in July 1934.