Avro 504K G-EASA near Armthorpe.
On 28th April 1922 some form of air display or air show was taking place at Armthorpe aerodrome, Doncaster. One of the aeroplanes in use there was an Avro 504 that was civilian owned, the owner and pilot was taking up paying passengers. During one of the flights it had taken off from Armthorpe with three passengers, a married couple and their child, for a short flight around the general Doncaster area. Soon after taking off the engine was not working properly, the aircraft descended and the pilot force landed in a ploughed field. The aircraft's undercarriage then broke and it overturned. The location given in the local newspaper seems to point the crash location to have been towards the north of Armthorpe and near the Doncaster to Thorne road. The aerodrome appears to have been just west of Green Lane Farm, in the same area. On making the forced landing the aircraft broke it's undercarriage and tipped up onto it's nose breaking the propeller. Other more modern accounts that list this incident incorrectly state the the pilot was killed. Having obtained the newspaper reports of the time this was not the case. An investigation followed and found the aircraft was overloaded with three passengers instead of two. It laid blame on the engine failure to the engine spark plugs and the engine distributor that were extremely dirty, this would have resulted in the engine misfiring and it was thought that poor maintainance was to blame, with the aircraft's ground engineer directly to blame. The AIB report states that this was the second accident that was a direct result of negligence by this ground engineer (The first was Avro 504 G-EAEB on 25th September 1921 at Norwich which was owned and flown by Mr Summerfield).
Pilot - Mr Samuel Summerfield.
Passenger - Mr. Johnson. Minor injuries.
Passenger - Mrs. Johnson.
Passenger - Child. Johnson.
Samuel Summerfield was born in 1894 in Derbyshire though later moved to Melton Mowbray. He was one of the names that have been forgotten in early British aviation. As early as 1909 he appears to have been building and flying his own gliders and in 1911 he was in business there selling full scale and model aircraft and engines. Taking up proper flying training he was awarded his Royal Aero Club Aviators' Certificate (Cert.No.292) following training at the Britol School, Brooklands in September 1912. He appears to have owned his own Bleriot monoplane in 1914 and also flew a Watson Rocking Wing Machine in 1914 (I would recommend anyone reading this to Google this type to get an idea of how early in powered flight this was). In June 1914 he survived what could have been a serious crash in his Bleriot when the rudder control wire broke, he crash landed but managed to keep his feet high and avoided any serious injury. He appears to have been flying as a civilian instructor during the first half of the First World War. He worked for the Midland Flying School, Birmingham in 1915 and the Bournemouth School in 1916. What he did in 1917 and 1918 is not yet known but he may have joined the RFC as a flying instructor and later with the RAF. After the First World War he undertook more civilian flying, at airshows taking paying passengers into the air. This was almost certainly what was happening when he crashed near Doncaster in 1922. He was the pilot of Avro 504 G-EAZW that crashed near Bradford on 3rd May 1924 while on a similar paying passenger flight, the aircraft was being flown in misty conditions and flew into telegraph wires and then crashed into a tree, before crashing onto a football pitch at Hartshead Moor Top. This line of work continued until at least 1926 while serving in the RAF Reserve. He was involved in a more serious accident on 27th July 1926 when he was flying Avro 504 G-EADP over Morecambe and his passenger fell out, wearing no parachute he was killed. By 1930 he appears to have been doing civilian flying at Bridlington but with his company Wolverhampton Aviation Co.Ltd. He relinquished his commission in the RAF in 1931. He would later leave the UK to become a gold prospector in Australia and died there in 1967.
This aircraft was a former RAF aircraft F9809. It first appears on the civilian register on 31st March 1920 when it was registered by Bournemouth Aviation Co. It was then re-registered on 14th November 1921 to S.Summerfield & Co. Following the crash in April 1922 it was written off and later recorded as being destroyed on the paperwork.