6 Group Unavailable
The flight was the pilot's last operational flight of his tour and he was due to be screened after the flight. The crew appear to have bombed the target area as instructed without incident and made for home. On their return to Yorkshire they joined the landing circuit for Breighton airfield and awaited their turn to land on the runway in use. In the time the aircraft took off from RAF Breighton and returned the wind direction was changing, the air pressure had also changed slightly. The wind had changed that much by the time this aircraft was into the landing circuit that all landings were delayed while the runway in use was changed. All aircraft in the circuit were told to continue circling the airfield at a height over 1,000ft and wait their turn to land. Because of the high experience of this pilot this aircraft was asked to make a dummy landing run over the new flare path to check the visibility. The Halifax flew as instructed at between 50 and 100 feet above the runway, after crossing the far end of the airfield boundary the aircraft climbed to around 300 feet and then began a turn to rejoin the airfield circuit. At 23:25 hrs while making the turn the aircraft lost height, the port wing tip clipped trees in an area of woodland called Brindleys Plantation near the village of Spaldington, around two miles South-East of RAF Breighton. It then cartwheeled, struck a small building in the wood and caught fire. Sadly all seven airmen in the aircraft were killed. An investigation could not be certain exactly what had caused the aircraft to loose height but it was thought that the pilot believed the aircraft to have been higher above the ground when he began making the turn, this was because the air pressure had changed by 6 millibars in the time the aircraft took off (when the altimeter zero was set to the ground level at RAF Breighton and the time it returned when the zero reading would have effectively been below the actual ground height. (Aviation Safety Network)
All seven members of the crew were killed
