P-38J "Lightning" 42-67782 at Liverton Mines.

At around 12.30hrs on 14th April 1944 three Lockheed Lightnings took off from their base at Goxhill, they were all to take part on an altitude formation flight. The aircraft were part of 554th Fighter Training Squadron, part of the 496th Fighter Group, USAAF. In the lead aircraft was 1st Lt James P Cole, number two was 2nd Lt Howard E Wilcox and number three was 2nd Lt Walter F Perra. All three aircraft climbed to 7000 feet over the base after forming up at about 2500 feet and they then headed north climbing in formation to 25,500 feet where there was a slight haze although this did not affect visiblity. At this altitude, the pilot of the lead aircraft would later report, he put them at approximately ten miles north of Scarborough and fifteen miles in from the sea, (over the middle of the North Yorkshire Moors). To get to this height took about 25 minutes. Once at this height they levelled out and flew in formation for a few minutes. Lt Wilcox had requested that the descent be slower than normal as he had a slight cold. After making a sharp turn all aircraft began to descend at about 3000 feet per minutes in a north-easterly direction and making turns as they went to 18,000 feet. At this altitude the lead pilot called for the other two aircraft to formate on him again. Number two, Wilcox was no-where to be seen and there was no response from him on the radio. Both lead and number three aircraft circled to try and find Lt Wilcox but they saw or heard nothing. The lead pilot radioed base to request they contact him but there was again no reply. Both other Lightning's returned to base and landed at 13.30hrs and nothing more was heard from the missing pilot or aircraft.

Lt Wilcox's aircraft, it was found, had suffered a failure in the tail section but this had not actually caused control to be lost in the first instant. The part of the aircraft joining the two tail booms had broken away in flight. Control of the aircraft was lost well above the estimated 6,000 feet where this occurred. The Lightning crashed at 13.25hrs at high speed and struck the ground inverted in a ploughed field at a shallow angle near Loftus. The tail unit was found some distance away in fields around Loftus. The aircraft's ammunition boxes were also found some distance away and investigation showed that ammunition had exploded in the aircraft before impact and that some of the .5 calibre cannon rounds had struck the pilot whilst in the air. The pilot would have stood little chance of surviving a strike by any of this calibre ammunition in the aircraft and even less of a chance of surviving the impact with the ground and was probably not alive when the aircraft hit the ground. The wreckage then caught fire which completely destroyed what remained of the aircraft on the ground. I carried out some research in the Loftus area in 2003 and found that the crash site was at Liverton Mines, the field where the aircraft crashed has had a housing development built very close to it in the years after the war.

Pilot - 2nd Lt Howard Eugene Wilcox USAAF (O-758135), of Los Angeles, California, USA. Initially buried Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey. Now buried Inglewood Park Cemetery, Los Angeles County, California, USA.