First ever fatal airliner crash – Cricklewood

Wasn’t this crash featured on TV last year?
I had never heard about it until quite recently but am pretty sure I learned about it from a TV programme…?
Ed

Part of G-EAMA, at Cricklewood Aerodrome on February 18, 1920

As I mentioned, I spent the 1960s living in a house in Wentworth Road, the other side of Golders Green Road from Basing Hill. To be honest, we didn’t go over that way much, but I did know it. In more recent years I have visited a family friend in Armitage Road (next one north of Basing Hill) and been astonished at the difference. There has been a lot of redevelopment along both roads – just look at the roof outlines, and you can see what are more-or-less original houses (they look like their neighbours), and those that are different. Looks from Google Earth as I see it that at least two houses in Basing Hill were in the process of redevelopment when the aerial photo was taken. This is the sort of area where tear-it-down-and-start-again is not uncommon. Additionally, I see from
http://www.bombsight.org/explore/greater-london/barnet/golders-green/
that a bomb fell at the junction of Basing Hill and The Ridgeway during WW2. My grandfather was a local warden during the war, and I’m pretty sure he described that one as a land-mine. Despite appearances, Number 6 and the houses around it might not be as ‘original’ as they look.

Funny thing is, growing up in the area, with my mother’s family having been there since 1900, and them all knowing (even then) my passion for aeroplanes – and with my great aunt having worked for Handley Page at Cricklewood – I knew nothing of this accident until a few years ago!

[Edit] Confirmed with my mother, who would have been about 11 when the bomb fell. She didn’t know detail about Basing Hill, but what appears to be the previous one in the stick fell on Woodstock Road, parallel to The Ridgeway, and demolished the whole middle of the road, leaving only the buildings at either end standing. The interactive version of Bombsite’s map http://www.bombsight.org/bombs/30608/ seems to put the last bomb in that sequence pretty much on 6 Basing Hill, not at the junction.

Thanks for the information guys, very interesting.

I have to say though that I’m not convinced about the location – 6 Basing Hill. If you look at the footage, backing on to the garden are semi-detached houses. Looking at Google earth they seem to be mainly detached houses around there, certainly the ones backing on to 6 Basing Hill. Any thoughts?

It would have looked like this.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]234522[/ATTACH]

The crash site is about a mile from the house I grew up in, as it happens.

Found this on Wikipedia, gives the address as No. 6 Basing Hill. It was the first fatal one in Britain, not the first ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Golders_Green_Handley_Page_O/400_crash

C H Barnes reports in ‘Handley Page Aircraft since 1907’ that one of the survivors – a Mr Eric Studd – ws initially reported missing because he wandered away from the crash site and was only located the next day after he had made his way semi-concussed to Paris by boat train.

Archive footage and address in this article from Yahoo News website –

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/on-this-day–first-airliner-crash-in-britain-as-plane-plunges-into-north-london-back-garden-155436662.html