Mosquito DZ421 in the foreground.
On 25th July 1944 the crew of this 1665 Mosquito Training Unit aircraft took off from Wyton to undertake a cross country training flight. While flying at a height of between twenty and twenty five thousand feet over Yorkshire, without warning the starboard undercarriage door suddenly opened, broke off and struck the starboard tail plane of the aircraft. The aircraft then went out of control and the pilot was able to escape from the aircraft as it broke up and deploy his parachute, the navigator sadly was not and was killed. The RAF's crash card, the Form AM1180, states he was killed as the aircraft broke up. The majority of the aircraft came down on land near Woodhouse Farm, Acklam to the south west of Malton but where the pilot landed is not yet known but if he baled out from a height as great as twenty thousand feet this could have been some distance away. Other accounts relating to this incident quote Westow as a crash location could be referring where he landed or infact part of the aircraft came to earth, plausable given the height in which the break-up occurred. The pilot was taken to Full Sutton airfield's Sick Quarters. The crash investigation blamed poor maintainance of the cables which operate the undercarriage doors as being the contributing factor for the accident occurring.
Mosquito DZ421 was built to contract ACFT/555 by the De Havilland Aircraft Co Ltd at Hatfield and was delivered to 139 Squadron at Wyton (in 8 Group P.P.F.) on 31st December 1943. It was involved in two damage incidents with 139 Squadron. The first on 7th July 1943 saw Cat.Ac/FB damage and the second on 31st January 1944 saw Cat.Ac/FA damage. A repair on site was made each time. The aircraft was transferred to 627 Squadron at Woodall Spa on 21st April 1944 but on 19th May 1944 it was in need of some form of repair that took place in a works factory. The history from then on is not listed on the aircraft's AM Form 78. It would have been issued to 1655 M.T.U. at Warboys once repaired but the date it arrived is not known. It was written off following the incident detailed above with Cat.E2/FA(Burnt) damage being recorded. The AM Form 78 took a long time to catch up and it was not struck off charge until 21st June 1947 when a census of aircraft presumably found no record of it still existing.
Pilot - WO Claude Evered Cook RNZAF (NZ.411616). Baled out.
Navigator - Sgt William George Ashley RAFVR (1581756), aged 21, of Small Heath, Birmingham. Buried Yardley Cemetery, Birmingham.
Sgt William Ashley (photograph Mr & Mrs J.R.Smith). My thanks to Mr Smith for contacting me with regard his brother-in-law, killed in this incident. Without his research into this loss this account would not be as detailed here. I also thank Mr Dave Williams for kindly finding and supplying the photograph of Sgt Ashley's gravestone to be included here.
Claude Cook was born in Greymouth, New Zealand on 24th June 1923. He enlisted for RAFV service on 10th March 1941 and embarked for training in Canada on 17th December 1941. At the time of this incident at Acklam he had already clocked up 1300 flying hours. He escaped a further Mosquito crash on 15th August 1944, he and his navigator baled out of Mosquito DZ477 when control was lost over Madley, Herefordshire. Both airmen were injured and were taken to Madley's station sick quarters before being transferred to the RAF Hospital at Credenhill. Claude Cook eventually recovered and returned to New Zealand.