Airspeed AS.65 Consul G-AIIS near Normanton, Wakefield.
On Tuesday, 1st November 1949 the pilot of this aircraft was intended on flying from Croydon, London to a landing strip at Crosland Heath, Huddersfield where his employer and the aircraft's owner David Brown and Sons operated their aircraft from. It is worth saying that David Brown had just bought the Aston Martin car company as well as being a tractor manufacturer and the flight back from London was probably a return trip after flying company employees there. On his flight north he was flying alone and thick fog affected visibility resulting in the pilot struggling to keep track of his location, to compound his problems the aircraft's radio failed. Having ended up some distance away from Huddersfield he attempted to locate both Yeadon and Sherburn in Elmet airfields to land there but could not find them. Still flying through thick fog he attempted to land on a school field but once close to landing he noticed that children were on it so pulled up then landed nearby in a rough field with the wheels down. The landing itself was successful but as he completed the landing run, the rough ground caused the undercarriage legs to collapse and it came to rest on it's belly. The pilot sustained no injuries. It later transpired that he had attempted to land on Normanton Grammar School playing fields. The landing was made a field between a quarry and a railway cutting, and possibly also a steep railway embankment.
Looking at old mapping, the Normanton Grammar School field lay on a rough North-East to South-West heading, immediately south-west of the field was Normanton Brick Works with what appears to have been a quarry associated with this. Beyond the brick works was Goosehill Railway Junction which contained a mix of both embankments and cuttings around it. I would suggest that the landing was made a field between the brick works and the junction.
G-AIIS was owned by Thomas Barclay Ltd, trading as International Airways. It may have have been repaired after the accident at Normanton as it survived until being scrapped at Croydon just over a year later.
Pilot - Mr Bob Jones DSO.
I have attempted to piece together various tit-bits of information about who I believe to be the pilot. Bob Jones was an accomplished pilot. He appears to have been called Bob rather than Robert as would probably have been more common in the 1920s. He was awarded the DSO for service in the Second World War for service with 15 Squadron, Gazetted on 2nd February 1945. He flew civilian aircraft for a time after the war and had crashed Airspeed Consul G-AIYS at Sherburn in Elmet on 24th August 1949 where he was lucky to survive. At the time he was living with his family at Ogley Hall, Castle Hill, Huddersfield as a guest of W J Holland. He appears to have rejoined the RAF Auxilliary with 616 Squadron at Finningley where he later flew Meteors. During June 1953 he was returning from an air to ground exercise and flying at 3,000 feet at .76 Mach when the cockpit canopy disintergrated. He managed to land safely at Finningley. On 4th October 1953 he was flying a Meteor from Leauchars to Finningley when he sustained a bird strike which made a large hole in the leading edge of the starboard wing outboard of the engine nacelle, he was able to land safely at Finningley. On 31st October 1953 burst a tyre on take off from Finningley but managed to get airborne, after flying around to use fuel and also jettisoning his ventral tank he landed at Finningley without incident. On 8th May 1954 he landed a 616 Squadron Meteor at Carnaby after a bird strike damaged the canopy which injured his neck and required treatment in hospital. By March 1955 he was working as a test pilot for Rolls-Royce, he was the 32 year old pilot of Lancastrian VL970 that crashed at Hucknall on 29th March 1955 being used by Rolls-Royce as a test bed for Avon jet engines, sadly he and three others were killed in the accident.