Spitfire P7591 near Sessay.
On 27th January 1944 this Air Fighting Development Unit (A.F.D.U.) aircraft was flying over Yorkshire as part of a cross country training flight. Exact details of where the aircraft had set out from is not yet known although a brief entry in a No.6 Group flying control log mentions Lindholme and also in the 1691 (Bomber) Gunnery Flight orb which states the aircraft was from Lindholme. The aircraft had taken off at just after 15.00hrs when, twenty minutes into the flight and while flying at 4,000 feet the Spitfire's engine failed. Loosing height to around 800 feet the engine then restarted but then failed again. The pilot was left with little option but to attempt to force land. He attempted the landing downwind near Sessay but struck a telegraph pole or powerline pole and wires during the landing and crashed. The location of the crash appears to have been between Sessay and Dalton in a field around 400 to 500 yards north-east of Sessay railway station. The pilot received minor injuries. The aircarft's starboard wing was torn off, the port wing had a cut in it and the propeller was bent.
Pilot - F/Lt Claude Gordon Hodson RAFVR (116806).
Claude Hodson joined the RAFVR in July 1939 and was called up for service on 1st September 1939. After completing pilot training at 6 O.T.U. he was posted to No.1 Squadron in September 1940 and became one of The Few, a Battle of Britain pilot. He appears to have undertaken flights with them between 18th September 1940 and 27th September 1940. he then appears to have been posted to 229 Squadron on 28th September 1940 and undertook his first operational flight with them on 29th September 1940. On 30th September 1940 he was flying Hurricane V7411 on a patrol when the aircraft appears to have been attacked and he was forced to bale out over Kent, sustaining minor injuries. The aircraft is not listed in Norman Franks' Fighter Command Losses book which I do not understand. He was posted overseas to Malta in January 1941 where he joined 261 Squadron. 261 Squadron disbanded in May 1941 so he was posted to 185 Squadron. Claude Hobson was granted a commission on 6th December 1941 and later served with 242 Squadron in North Africa. He survived the War and transferred to the S.R.A.F. in August 1945.