Halifax JN919 near Danby Wiske.
During the evening of 6th May 1944 this 102 Squadron aircraft was flown on a cross country training exercise and the crew took off from Pocklington airfield at around 22.20hrs. While flying at 3,000 feet the port inner engine began to overspeed. The AM Form 1180 for the incident appears to state that the crew reduced the power to all of the engines (but why is not stated), shortly afterwards a fire developed on the port inner engine and then control appears to have been lost. The pilot was able to partly regain control but ordered the crew to bale out. All left the aircraft and it crashed in the Lovesome Hill area, a few miles north of Northallerton, at 22.50hrs. The locations of where each of the airmen landed is not precisely known but three (including the pilot) reported themselves to Great Smeaton police station, one was at Hutton Bonville and one was at Blackberry Farm, Deighton. The final airman was unaccounted for some time befoe being found at Northallerton Friarage Hospital at midnight for what appears to have been a nose injury. This was the final Halifax MkII to be written off by 102 Squadron and a day later they wrote of their first Halifax MkIII in LW138.
Historians Ken Reast, Albert Pritchard and Eric Barton believed that they located this crash site with permission from the landowner in December 1997 confirming the location with small surface finds just north of Crowfoot Lane, between Danby Wiske and the A167, north of Northallerton. This agrees with a location and description given in a police report.
Pilot - Sgt Herbert Davies RAFVR (1456162).
Rest of crew - Names unknown.