DH 110 Aircrash Farnborough 1952

I was there too……..

I was seven at the time but certainly remember the events. We were home on leave from Kenya. My Dad felt I would be able to see better if we moved back from the front of the crowd line: he says that could have saved our lives as some of the wreckage fell where we were orginally planned to stand. My mother was back in Southampton but fortunately did not have the radio on.

Planemike

I was there

If I shut my eyes now,I can recall it as if it was yesterday, I hear aloud bang and see the aircarft breaking up.Then I hear and see the engine passing over my head. Then I get a feeling of a heavy body falling on top of me, it was my dad!!! I was only four at the time and apparently he pushed me to the ground and covered me to prevent any debris hitting me. We were very lucky

I have a vague recollection of seeing casualties and very fortunately no recurring nightmnares!! Ive been to Farnbourgh many times since and spent 25 years working for Flight Refuelling so its not put me off avaition, I am pleased to say.

There is a chap who is a member of a group I am in who was just yards away from where the engines came down. He was very nearly one of the casualties.

25-30 years ago I used to work with an old guy who must have been standing very near him, as he told a similar story. At the time he was a draughtsman at Handley Page at Radlett, and that day was the drawing office works outing to SBAC.
It certainly emotionally scarred him as he never ever went to another airshow, and indeed eventually left the avaition industry completely by the end of the 1950’s.

I was told that a person from Leighton Buzzard was killed in the crowd. My father went the next day.

Dave

I was posted out to Egypt in Feb ’52 and corresponded with a girlfriend to whom I was almost engaged. She was keen on aircraft and went to that display.
Her letters rapidly tailed off afterwards and soon ceased altogether.
Another lucky escape 😀

I was going to be there but couldn’t afford to go. Some school mates were on the hill and missed by the flying metal by just a few yards. Had I been able to afford to go I might well not be here today.
Mike

de H 110 crash

There is a chap who is a member of a group I am in who was just yards away from where the engines came down. He was very nearly one of the casualties.

In the cockpit crash photo I have viewed, a flying boot can be seen but nothing else other than a disintegrating mass of metal. Presumably this is the doctored photo? Whatever it does or doesn’t show it’s a remarkable shot.

Anon.

I’m sure I read somewhere that there is a memorial plaque around the area where the engines landed in the crowd. Is this true?

My father was in the crowd when it crashed and afterwards told the story of how he went back to his office a few days later(having taken some holiday )to find a black cloth and floweres on the de.Apparently his colleagues thought he’d been killed!

Yes as Bruce states, the image that shows the forward fusalage of WG236 hitting the ground just yards in front of the crowd was apparently very graphic in it’s original form but was published in an adjusted form.
After being published in one of the newspapers it went on to win a prestigous photographic prize that year, though can’t remember which. It is very rare to see that picture at all these days, and the images we normally see are the centre fusalage and booms which fluttered down on the northern side of the airfield, or the famous engine into crowd scenes.

When people say about changing standards and how graphic the news is today, it is surprising to some just how graphic the press photographs were back then.

Yes, it was airbrushed – in the original, the crew can be clearly seen apparently.