During the early evening of 15th June 1950 this No.228 Operational Conversion Unit was due to be flown on a flying test prior to a night flight that was due to be flown later than evening, following the test the crew were also instructed to combine it was flying two circuits and landings. At 17.07hrs the crew began to take off but as soon as the aircraft lifted off the ground and reached around twenty feet the starboard wing dropped. It then swung to starboard and the starboard wing tip hit ground just off the runway, it then made a semi-cartwheel which saw it skid tail first across the airfield until it then stopped on another runway. Part of the cockpit broke off and the pilot was thrown out. The navigator remained in the cockpit and despite being seriously injured he released himself from the wreckage. The starboard engine then caught fire and while the station fire fighting crew fought the fire for some time but the fuel that was being slowly released could prevented the fire from being total extinguished and it eventually had to be left to burn itself out. Both pilot and navigator were seriously injured.
Pilot (Pupil) - P/O John Richard Edmondson-Jones RAF (607045). Injured.
Navigator (Pupil) - F/O John Etkins RAF (168457). Injured.
An investigation found that the starboard engine had failed at the worst possible time just as it left the ground, owing to where various levers were in the cockpit the pilot would have had his left hand on the throttles while on the ground run with his right hand on the control column. As it left the ground he would have had to take his left hand off the throttle to hold the control column as his right hand would have to raise the undercarriage. The engine failed at the moment he was raising the undercarriage which meant his left hand had to hold the control column and could not therefore remove it to reduce power on the engines and abandon take off.