Halifax HX188 near Carnaby airfield.
During the evening of 12th September 1944 this 1663 Heavy Conversion Unit aircraft was one of three from the same unit flown on a Group Bullseye flight. Whether this Bullseye flight was an exercise to navigate to a British town or city to make a dummy attack or whether it was a small force of trainee bomber crews that formed a dummy bomber force to head out over the North Sea to confuse German radar as to the actual intended route of a real bomber force. I favour the latter but I have not found any records to conrfirm this. This aircraft took off from Rufforth at around 20.20hrs. A lot of detail is missing from the source documents I have found to date. In flight the pilot believed that the port outer engine was failing as the propeller was overspeeding so feathered the propeller and shut down the engine. By this stage the crew must have already been off the Yorkshire Coast but heading back towards land and towards Carnaby and the emergency landing strip. As they were heading towards Carnaby the port inner engine also failed and unable to maintain height the aircraft could not reach the airfield. A forced landing was made in a field at 23.38hrs around a mile south of the airfield near the Lissett to Carnaby road with the wheels up and it caught fire after crashing. One member of the crew broke his ankle, the air gunner named below was named on the AM Form 1180 but then crossed out and he was probably the person injured. Ironically he was later posted to 158 Squadron at Lissett. The port inner engine failed because the crew had operated the fuel supply cocks incorrectly. The AM Form 1180 appears to suggest that the crew shut down the port outer engine when they may have been able to sort the problem with the constant speed unit on the propeller.
Pilot - WO Ronald William Clifford Poley RAFVR (1375382).
Air Gunner - Sgt Edward T Wistow RAFVR (1800100). Injured.