Wellington DV808 on Fixby, Huddersfield.
Edward Doylerush detailed this incident in his "No Landing Place, Volume 2" book having interviewed two of the crew. On 18th December 1943 the crew of this 21 Operational Training Unit aircraft took off from Moreton in Marsh at 12.07hrs to undertake a cross country training flight. The visibility was poor from soon after taking off, which then became poorer and while they were roughly in the York area a recall to base signal appears to have been missed by the wireless operator who was busy sending signals to request their position. From this point they appear to have got hopelessly lost and it appears that whatever could go wrong in the flight then did go wrong. For whatever reason the bomb aimer then appears to have taken himself off to the front turret and rotated it, but it over rotated and he nearly fell out of the aircraft. The crew roughly located their turning point of Flamborough Head and then part of the route took them over the North Sea and south, in the area between Flamborough Head and The Wash. While over the North Sea guns of a ship in a convoy began to fire at them despite firing the colours of the day flares. They managed to shake off the guns but believed that the trailing aerial was lost at that point and eventually ended up over what they thought was the Norfolk. They picked up a recall signal for their aircraft telling them to divert to High Ercall and believing they knew a course to fly headed towards Shropshire. Soon after the IFF set began to warn them and which ever direction they turned the IFF set warnings would not go away. Seeing a gap in the cloud the pilot descended but found themselves flying up a valley towards high ground, managing to turn around and realising the fuel was running out the pilot landed the aircraft with the wheels down at 15.50hrs. Almost certainly having no idea where they were the aircraft ran through a hedge, the undercarriage collapsed and then the starboard wing broke off. Remarkably there were no injuries. It transpired they had crashed onto a golf course at Fixby, near Huddersfield. The pilot was blamed for this incident and was withdrawn from the 21 OTU training course and the crew were assigned a new pilot. Unfortunately two weeks later they crashed again killing the new pilot and two members of the crew who had crash landed at Fixby.
Pilot - W/O Goronwy Wyn Roberts RAFVR (1079626).
Navigator - Sgt Trevor James Freeman RAFVR (1394987).
Bomb Aimer - Sgt Peter North RAF.
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - Sgt Thomas Briggs RAFVR (1227721).
Air Gunner - Sgt Arthur Francis Mundell RAFVR (1355257).
Of those listed above, Freeman, North, Briggs and Mundell were back in the air within days. On 31st December 1943 they were flying in Wellington X9666 on a training flight when it crashed into high ground Ffrith Caenewydd, Wales. Freeman and Briggs were killed; Freeman is buried at Erith Cemetery, Kent while Briggs is buried at Worcester (Astwood) Cemetery. North appears to have received injuries that prevented any further flying while Mundell escaped serious injury and would go on to fly with 70 Squadron and 37 Squadron.
Becoming a staff pilot and receiving a commission in April 1945 P/O Goronwy Roberts was sadly was killed in Oxford NM482 in a collision with Anson DG799 on 30th May 1945 at Halfpenny Green with No.3 A.O.S. He is buried at Llanllyfni Cemetery, Wales.