Blackburn B.2 G-ACER at Brough aerodrome.
Blackburn B.2 G-ACER was on the books with No.4 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School when this incident occurred. This unit was a civilian flying school that gave basic flying training to RAF pilots. On 8th May 1936 the pilot of this aeroplane took off from Brough to undertake a training flight but as it left the ground the engine began to fail. He managed to remain airborne and direct the aeroplane back to the aerodrome but at around fifty feet above the ground it appears to have stalled. In the resulting crash the cockpit area was engulfed in flames. The pilot managed to free himself from the cockpit but sustained terrible injuries across his whole body that saw him taken to hospital in Hull before treatment that must have lasted months. The aeroplane was later repaired. The pilot was from my home town though there appears nothing locally that remembers him or this incident.
Pilot - (P/O?) Reginald Hugh Wadsworth Bundle RAF (74979). Of Pickering, North Yorkshire. Seriously injured.
The pilot was the son of the Reginald A Bundle, Vicar of Pickering, North Yorkshire at the time and was just eighteen years old of this accident. He has been quoted as the reason why what became known as the "Guinea Pig Club" was created but he was not actually a member of the club despite undergoing some forty seven operations. Clearly the injuries and disfigurement greatly effected him for the rest of his life. He married in the Uxbridge area in Summer 1940. I cannot find the entry for him receiving an RAF commission but this clearly happened, and possibly before the accident in May 1936, and owing to his injuries his commission in the RAF was relinquished on 22nd March 1941 (with him being in the rank of F/Lt at that date). His life must have been a struggle. In October 1949 he appeared in court in Gloucester for passing worthless cheques which eventually saw him sentenced to twelve months in prison. He returned to the Pickering area, dying in the Ryedale district in 1988, his wife died five years earlier in Ryedale.