Halifax W1095 near Catton.
During the morning of 1st January 1944 this 1659 Heavy Conversion Unit aircraft was flown on a circuits and landings training exercise at Topcliffe airfield. Once such landing was made with a gusty wind and with one of the engines deliberately shut down, on the approach to land at Topcliffe at 11.20hrs the pilots noticed that a party of contractors and their materials were ahead of them in the undershoot area. As the instructor believed that the aircraft would undershoot and possibly involved a collision he deliberately further undershot before reach them and the aircraft struck piles of gravel and sand. The aircraft was badly damaged and must have landed wheel-up as all four engines received damage.
Pilot - WO Stanley James Pearce RAFVR (1194740).
Pilot - F/Sgt Edmund Arthur Vigor RCAF (R/52535).
Stanley Pearce was later awarded the DFM. His medal was stolen in recent years and searching the internet Folkstone Police Station, Kent are to be contacted should the medal surfac
P/O Edmund Vigor and his then crew were killed on 28th April 1944 when Halifax LL258, which he was piloting was shot down over Belgium on Ops to Montzen. The aircraft is believed to have been shot down by a night-fighter piloted Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer (the highest scoring Luftwaffe night-fighter pilot in the War) and crashed in the vicinity of Nurop & Teuven, Belgium. Ted Vigor is buried in Heverlee War Cemetery, Belgium.
In Summer 2008 Eric Barton, Ken Reast and Albert Pritchard sought permission from the landowner and located small fragments of the aircraft in a field between Catton and Topcliffe airfield, around a mile west of the end of the west to east runway.