On 13th June 1953 there was to have been an exercise involving Meteors from 264 Squadron and aircraft from other squadrons over general area of the River Tees area. The weather however put paid to the immediate plans and the exercise was cancelled. The Meteors from 264 Squadron were then ordered to fly at 2000 feet and exercise the defences at Thornaby and Oulston airfields. The pilot of Meteor WM258 was the Squadron Commander for 264 Squadron, he ordered all other aircraft to descend through the cloud at their descretion and to make dummy attacks on the airfields. The Commander's aircraft was to have made an attack on Thornaby airfield but would be the one to crash, at about 18.45hrs it flew into high ground on the Eston Hills, to the south of Eston Nab, sadly killing both crew. The wreckage was spread over a wide area.
Pilot - S/Ldr James Lomas DFC, AFC and Bar RAF (47118), aged 34. Buried Thornaby Cemetery, Yorkshire (H/I/1).
Navigator / Radar Operator - F/Lt Bernard Noel Hanratty RAF (1903506), aged 30. Buried York Cemetery (grave 5870).
S/Ldr Jim Lomas (pictured above in a Yorkshire Post photograph) was from Elmton, near Doncaster and was a very experienced pilot if not one of the RAF's finest fighter pilots of his day. He was born on 15th February 1919, had joined the RAF in 1935 as a fifteen year old and worked his way up through the ranks. He received a commission in 1941 and had survived a number of war-time accidents and incidents. He flew Mosquito's towards the latter part of the war and was widely known as a crack night-fighter pilot. In November 1947 he was the pilot of a Meteor which flew from Turnhouse, Edinburgh to Bovingdon in Hertfordshire at a record speed of 617.6 MPH. In 2008 I was contacted by his son and daughter and it has been a pleasure to have been able to share this research with them.
The following statement adds some detail and is taken from "Wings over Linton" book by Peter D Mason.."Jimmy Lomas was a most experienced and skilful pilot and a highly respected Station Commander. On this day the Station were involved in a major air exercise and in the late afternoon low cloud blew in off the North Sea which shrouded the North York Moors and Cleveland Hills down to 200 feet. 264 Squadron amongst other tasks had been detailed to deliver an attack on a battery of guns located somewhere on low ground in the Thornaby area, but because of the sudden deterioration in the weather, S/Ldr Lomas called up the sector to say that such an attack was no longer practicable. However after a discussion of the matter on the R/T with the Sector Commander, Lomas agreed to try and deliver the briefed attack himself so as not to disappoint the Army. On that day he was not flying with his own regular navigator. Due to a slight error in descending through the 8/8ths cloud cover the aircraft just clipped the lip of the steep escarpment at the Northern edge of the Moors and both crew were killed in the resulting crash. Group Captain M Pedley DSO OBE DFC was airborne at the time of the crash, after landing he went to the scene, it was stated that if Lomas's aircraft had been only a few feet higher it would have cleared the high ground in safety."
Noel Hanratty's grave in York Cemetery, he was born in Dublin on 14th December 1922. I have yet to discover any further information about him.
I visited the crash site in July 2006 locating a number of small fragments of the Meteor at the site. The general area of the crash is frequently used by young arsonists to practice their skills and was left bare of all vegetation in 2006. I returned a year later (when the photograph shown above was taken) and again in 2017.
A piece of the aircraft picked up at the site soon after the crash by Mr John Danks, I thank him for contacting me and for this photograph. Since creating this webpage I have received numerous emails from residents of the Eston area to say that they witnessed the remains of the aircraft being on the hillside following the crash.
Meteor WM258 was built to contract 6/ACFT/6141 by Armstrong Whitworth Ltd at Coventry and was delivered to the RAF in February 1953. It was issued to 264 Squadron shortly afterwards. It was written off with Cat.5/FA(burnt) damage recorded following this incident on the Eston Hills.