thanks chaps, i positioned myself up the tower at the castle but alas the crew took her the direct route over waddington way so i missed out. Still, nice to see her albeit very small through a 300mm lens!

better luck next time hopefully

Hi everyone – just retnd from 3 weeks in france 🙂 & catching up – the website that the original info was taken from was mine & I am the author of the page mentioned – in this area there are still many such “High Ground Wreck” sites with varying amounts of wreckage left. HE226 has to my knowledge been subject to two licenced excavations by different groups and many parts have been recovered and preserved. I have visited the site and attended one of the excavations, but have no artefacts from it. It is an unusual site in that the the level of destruction during the crash of the aircraft components is quite shocking – the ground here has virtually no top soil & is a solid limestone pavement a few centimeters down. So although there does appear to be a substantial amount of wreckage, what is left is very badly shattered.

A memorial at each site would be nice and I totally agree with the final sentiment above – however this would be very costly / time consuming for an individual or small group, so I feel that the remaining wreckage may be seen as a memorial + the virtual memorials in the form of the web pages I create – which has obviously worked in this case, bringing this site and the fate of these airmen to peoples attention.

Sadly I feel I cannot publish exact locations on my site and only give out such information by request (though I obviously included enough to allow this one to be located with a little detective map work) as not everyone is as responcible or respectful as the original poster of this thread. I have seen parts taken illegally fron wrecksites featured on my website appear on ebay & have been involved with attempts to persuade ebay to stop listing these items – however many parts offered for sale are actually from legally excavated sites and offered by well known aviation enthusiasts – I personally feel this is morally wrong, but other people obviously have other opinions / priorities 🙁

Nick, thanks for providing the website, I aim to visit somemore of the sites next time i return to Yorkshire. I may contact you for specific locations if this is ok? Feel free top use any of these images for your site if you wish.

best regards, Steve

Steve.

Firstly, I take it the crew’s remains are no longer there. Less than ten days before wars end as well.

I presume they are no longer there, I have no evidence to suggest either way though.

If you’re worried about theft from the site perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to highlight the location? Not criticising, just a thought.

The site is well known locally and thanks to the net nationally. It could be found by anyone with a little determination. Maybe I say this with a little naivety but on a forum like this I would hope to be able to share this information with the confidence that it will be used in a positive way.

best regards, Steve

The answer, Hatton, is probably ‘none’, for a number of reasons:

They’re usually pre-occupied with the job of crewing the aircraft (with all that entails, navigation, weather monitoring, timings etc), and unless they are looking for a particular feature of which they have knowledge (in this case aircraft wreckage), will pass over the sight none the wiser.

I presume that there were thousands of similar wrecks on high ground, the same high ground which is flown over by todays crews. Particularly for those aircrew operating at low level, they most certainly will be ‘heads out’ to avoid the ground, obstuctions, and looking for the next nav feature. They will acutally probably come close to dozens of crash sites on one sortie alone.

However, if they were to be passed a six figure OS grid reference, they may be up to the challenge (particularly helicopter crews, who have the luxury of coming to a halt)) of finding the wreckage as a turning/drop off/pick up point, and your post could be used as a point of interest in the crew brief.

Hope this is of interest, and thanks for the thread.

thanks for the replies, was gettign worried that on a historic aviation forum that this wasn’t of any interest.

I hope my comments about current crews not realising what lies on the moors below was not taken as a critisism. I just find it interesting that history and events lies unknown to so many.