Canberra crash Crewkerne 60's/70's?

Canberra Crewkerne 1968

I think it was more likely it went middle top to middle bottom, in the top of the picture is a White roof of a factory and an industrial estate. I was in the factory and we heard the noise as it went over. My father worked in the factory behind the bungalow and he was walking across the forecourt as it went over. He was the other person that died at the scene. I think the plane came down vertically.

Could this be it?

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&q=petrol+stations&fb=1&gl=uk&ei=VR20TMC7DY-RjAf57_DGDA&ved=0CB8QtgMwAA&t=h&sll=50.879227,-2.784433&sspn=0.000476,0.00254&split=1&rq=1&ev=zi&radius=0.07&hq=petrol+stations&hnear=&ll=50.879701,-2.784417&spn=0.000476,0.00254&z=19&iwloc=A

that looks as though its the area, the house over the road and behind the petrol station sign is still there.. the house in the crash photo that has the mud splatted on it looks as though in the google maps pic that it has had an extention built from where the small pitched part of the roof that can be seen in the crash shot and where the the hedge line is between the houses in the google maps pic seems to be where the initial impact point was for the Canberra??.

I think I see what you mean…you are suggesting bottom left to top right?

thats it. its difficult to describe due to the angle of the shot..
i would even go as far to say the the aircraft hit the ground at a knife edge angle with one wing tip pointing to the ground and the other pointing to the sky due to the sharp impact crater rather than at a flatter angle where there would have been more devistation at the impact point otherwise… this may account for the death of the pilot? because the bang seats in those days were quite limited for safe ejection at low hight and low speed, if the aircraft had been slightly over the vertical axis at the time of ejection the pilot would be pointing towards the ground rather than to the sky. thus limiting even more the safe zone for ejection. most military ejecter seats nowerdays are the zero zero type where the pilot can eject from a stationary aircraft on the ground or even upside down (hight permitting) for the seat to automaticaly right itself before parachute deployment if need be. in all probability the Canberra pilot stayed with the aircraft until the last second to either try and save the aircraft or to steer it clear of the town, much in the same way it seems with the recent and very sad loss of the Red Arrows pilot.

I have little respect for the ASN website which is made to look official and authoritive but is anything but. However, it was posted as a reference so needed challenging.

I don’t think ASN purports to be anything more than it is, a list of many military and civil accidents on one easy to use site which must be a massive task to collate, let alone research every accident and correct the generally known info.
I find that it’s a good starting point and is up to the reader to further research the incident.

I think I see what you mean…you are suggesting bottom left to top right?

the lack of damage to the hedge on the left of shot and the amount of damage to the white car at right of shot would suggest a left to right impact with a high rate of vertical descent involved within the left to right momentum of the aircraft. enough to throw the sods of mud up the house but also to throw wreckage and debris over the road after hitting the grassed area near the hedge first.
the lack of fire/scorch damage to the white car would also suggest that any fire took place out of shot over to the right.

Surely the still standing streetlamp says it didn’t come in left to right? Did it come over the garage?

The plane came down in the garden of the ‘peppered house’ or bungalow, behind which there was a factory filled with workers as it was in the middle of the day, there were more housing estates, and industrial estates in close vicinity and of course the garage. The pilot died because he ejected to late after circling to long to steer away from the built up area and garage. It could have been so much worse.

the house on the left is peppered with what looks like mud with a large lump of the aircraft on the ground to the side of it. across the street you can see the damage to buildings and cars. interesting to see that the road looks as though its still open to traffic so soon after the disaster!!..

That was mighty close to houses and property. Thanks for posting.

this should tie down the exact location for you. looks as though it hit from left to right through the picture.
be interesting to see an updated picture of the area

Thank you gentlemen. I hope you will forgive me for being deliberately provocative with my post, but I did it since there appeared to be little factual information.

Like you Abadonna I have little respect for the ASN website which is made to look official and authoritive but is anything but. However, it was posted as a reference so needed challenging.

I appreciated that you were repeating a hearsay account, Wyvernfan, but the problem was that no-one attempted to correct the details – which, as I see it, was the object of your initial post. Thanks to Nimgen (and author Colin Cummings) a much clearer description of the sequence of events has been posted which allows the veracity of eye-witness accounts to be tested.

The “Category Five” book entry for the accident states:

1 Oct 68, WH715, Canberra B2, ETPS, near Crewkerne Somerset. The pilot, who was a student on No 27 Fixed Wing Course of the ETPS, was undertaking a series of tests to assess the asymmetric handling characteristics of the Canberra. This particular flight was to explore the safety speed at 2000 feet. During the exercise the pilot lost control and the recovery was affected when the aircraft entered cloud at 1500 feet. The pilot ejected but was outside the seat limits and he was killed. A civilian died of a heart attack and two others R Meacham and A Hoskins were injured whilst attempting to locate the pilot.

Capitaine Jean G Depui, 30, French Air Force
Mr Charles Penman, 55

Lyffe,
I am the original poster of this thread, and my opening description of the events is based on what i was told by an eye witness.
I am in no way stating that what he said is correct or factual!

I’ve never put much store on the accuracy of ASN reports, for historic military accidents at least. I’ve seen a number of gross errors in the few reports I’ve looked at over the years. The Derek Collier Web book “U.K. Flight Testing Accidents 1940 – 1971” has the accident as a loss of control during asymmetric assessment exercise, recovery hampered by entering cloud.

Couple of things worry me about this story; firstly the ‘summary’ given at http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=21026. This gives the phase of the flight as being ‘Approach’ and the destination airfield as Boscombe down. Crewkerne seems to be a rather long distance from Boscombe for the aircraft to have been on an approach – unless the summary is in error and the aircraft was approaching Yeovilton which is much closer to Crewkerne.

The other point of interest is the very first post which describes the aircraft as circling for ‘some time in difficulty’. Again this doesn’t tie in with the above link given the proximity to Yeovilton. If the aircraft had been circling for some time, and presumably under control, one has to ask why the aircraft didn’t come down in open country.

A report of the accident in The Times on 2 October, starts with ” A French test pilot died after apparently steering his blazing Canberra bomber over the outskirts of Crewkerne, near Yeovil, Somerset, to avoid buildings.” This doesn’t fit with an eye-witness’s account in the very last paragraph in the report:

Mr Philip Burnham, who saw the crash, said he heard the sound of an engine splutter and choke, and then the aircraft broke from low cloud, swept along the top of the houses and fell straight into the ground.

Too many inconsistencies – does anyone have knowledge of the official accident report?

Canberra crash, Crewkerne. 1968.

I was interested to read that Mr Ron Meacham had celebrated his 90th birthday, congratulations, well done. My father was Mr Charles Penman, who died of a heart attack at the scene of the crash, along with a very brave pilot, who I feel gave his own life to save the lives of many people. The devastation could have been far worse had he ejected earlier to save himself, with all the houses and factories in the area. I was born and brought up In Crewkerne, and will never forget that day. I wish Ron and his family well.

And another not dissimilar thread here.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=98768&highlight=canberra+wyton

Heres a link to a Pic of her in 1964.

http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1056109/

I met a man who remembers it, he will never forgot it, . and he told me he saw some things that day as a young man he wished he hadnt seen,quite traumatic for a young teen in a sleepy village :(.

One of my friends was born and brought up in Crewkerne. He was only three at the time of the accident but is well aware of the details and in fact remembers his paper round at Ron Meacham’s newsagents along the road from the petrol station! Anyway, the point of this post is that he confirms the Google maps image is indeed the correct location.

Ian