Thanks guys, I appreciate your help. I was a pupil at St Austell Grammar School at the time and can well remember that at school assembly the head master sternly ordering us to hand in any parts of the aircraft that we had retrieved.

After leaving Yatesbury, while doing National Service, I was posted to ASWDU, St Mawgan in July 1952. The unit had two Bristol Sycamores one of which is illustrated in ‘The Observers Book Of Aircraft’, popular at the time. In the September one of the helicopters was due to give a display at St. Austel speedway in the interval to commemorate Battle of Britain. I was a member of the ground crew to service the aircraft if needed and we attended the display. The helicopter flew in from St. Mawgan at the start of the meeting and sat in the arena waiting for the interval. By the time of the display it was fairly dark and the arena was lit by festooned lighting around the track. The crew were the station CO. Group Captain Dorret, our unit CO. Flt. Lt. Minifie and two others. The display started well and the helicopter demonstrated flying backwards and sideways etc., while doing the display it was noticed that the engine note suddenly changed and the aircraft had difficulty gaining altitude. The pilot decided to clear the spectators by landing in the adjacent car park but had problems with lift and the tail skid severed the lighting cable and plunged the stadium in darkness. It was at this moment we realised he was in serious trouble and the pilot tried to land in a clear space but caught a coach and the helicopter fell onto its side. I ran to the crash, three of the crew managed to get out but the other, our CO. Flt. Lt. Minifie was seriously injured and unconscious. The police took charge of the proceedings and called an ambulance and the three survivors were well enough to say over the PA system that all was in hand. I think the rest of the match was abandoned. Later we heard that our CO died of a fractured skull and a week or so later our unit attended a military funeral with a gun salute in St Columb Minor cemetery. How the rest of the crew only had superficial injuries and Flt. Lt. Minifie was badly injured was because he had undone his seat belt to operate a manual floodlight to light up the ground to land and when it crashed he was thrown against the helicopter,s dashboard.
Apparently the episode was front page news in the ‘Daily Herald’, a national newspaper of the time.