Handley Page Halifax LV818 in the news

in the York Press today

York TV company films dramatic quest to find crashed Halifax bombers
8:20am Monday 21st November 2011

A TV production company from York has teamed up with a group of amateur archaeologists to find the remains of a Halifax bomber which crashed in France after taking off from an East Yorkshire airfield during the war.

The Halifax LV818 took off from its Ten Squadron base, Melbourne Airfield, in December, 1944, to join a raid in Germany.

However, it accidentally collided with another Halifax (actually NP699) flown by Canadians, and exploded in a fireball 14,000 ft above the tiny town of Rocroi on the French-Belgian border. All but one of the 15 men on board the two aircraft were killed.

Mandrill Television, based at Upper Poppleton, followed David Mole, a former chairman of the Ten Squadron Association, to Rocroi to unearth clues to what happened – ahead of the unveiling of a memorial to the two air crews – 67 years after the planes went down.

David was only seven days old when his wireless operator father, Flying Officer Malcolm Mole, died in the mid-air collision.

The filming for the new Discovery History TV series War Digs took a dramatic turn when bomb disposal experts detected a massive object nine metres below a forest crash site.

Wartime bomb load reports showed the Canadian aircraft had a massive, 2000 lb bomb on board when it left base.

With the dig under the control of bomb disposal officers, the archaeologists found an array of artefacts from the stricken aircraft.

Programme producer Chris Wise, who is a former Press reporter, said: “It was one of the most exciting shoots I’ve been on since I set up the company 16 years ago – especially when a torpedo-shaped object emerged from the mud at the bottom of our trench”.

The programme also features veterans of Ten Squadron – now in their late 80s and 90s – who re-united at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington to re-live their wartime exploits in Halifax bombers.

The museum has one of only two complete Halifax bombers left in the world.