Halifax MZ951 at Tholthorpe airfield.
During the evening of 6th December 1944 this 420 Squadron aircraft was to have been flown on an operational flight to bomb Osnabruck and took off from Tholthorpe airfield at 15.53hrs. During the take off run it appeared that the undercarriage was retracted too soon after becoming airborne and the wheel clipped the ground as the leg was folding, this damaged the mechanism and it would not retract properly. The pilot managed to continue with the take off run and get properly into the air. Because the leg could not be retracted properly the crew abandoned the operational sortie. It was flown out to sea where the bomb load was jettisoned (though the time of 17.42hrs cannot be correct). On the approach to land at Tholthorpe the starboard undercarriage would then not properly lock down so collapsed on landing at 17.45hrs. The crew believed the problem to have been hydraulic failure rather than what was later investigated to have been the damage on take off. The 420 Squadron records do not list full crews flying operationally on this date.
Pilot - F/O William Hamilton Kennedy MacDonald RCAF (J/86834).
Crew - Names unconfirmed.