It wasn’t a Battle it was a Mosquito in disguise 😀

There was a crash in 1951 – Your dad has a good memory

The Times – Wednesday Sept 26 1951

Pilot Officer M. F. Rogers of Northwood, Middlesex was killed yesterday when a jet Meteor fighter aircraft he was flying crashed on South Moor golf course, near Stanley Country Durham”

So all we need now is the Serial of the aircraft – If someone has a copy of Cummings Post War Losses book to hand and could look up Sept 25th 1951

http://www.forcesmemorial.org.uk/roll-of-honour/roll-of-honour-profile.asp?profile=83237

Paul

“In today’s post the mighty ‘The Battle of France – Then And Now’,”

There is even a photo of someone called Peter Arnold with Billy Drake in this book 😀

As it went down into the water, in wartime, I expect it is still at the bottom of the lake!

Lake Victoria has a maximum depth of 84 m (276 ft) and a mean depth of 40 m (131 ft), and is 68,800 square kilometres (26,560 mi²) in size.

That’s a lot of lake to try to recover wreckage from…even if the crash spot is known to within a couple of miles.

The Times states that crashed in Kavirondo Gulf, Lake Victoria, early on the morning of Saturday 19/12/1942 and had just taken of from Kisumu, it had left Cairo on Thursday and arrived at Kisumu on the 18/12/42 (Friday). The accident occurred 10 miles from Kisumu

A further look in the Times shows a report on the court of inquiry on Jan 22nd 1943 , says the accident was caused by an electrical failure in the under-carriage safety lock circuit’. “The combined difficulties of endeavouring to raise the under-carriage and maintain height and speed with a fully loaded aircraft during a night take-off under unfavourable flying conditions gave rise to an error of judgement in wich the pilot allowed the aircraft to fly into the water”. A contributory cause was pilot fatigue of the ‘elderly pilot’ whe had flown 1800 miles in the previous 24 hours and had only 6 hours sleep and was trying to reach South Africa at the special request of General Pienaar as soon as possible’ – No evidence of sabotage was found

All I have on this aircraft is

C/N 2057 18-08-01 ZS-ATK South African Railways & Harbours (for South Afican Air Ways) 10 Feb 41 (E-6848 21 Feb 41) name “Major Warde”? Not Taken Up, delivered S. Africa 9 May 91. To SAAF as 248. Middle East Command, serial “K-248”. Crashed on take off from Kisumu Air Port by Lake Victoria 19 Dec 42

From The Lockheed Twins by Perter Marson

To complete the picture

Noorduyn UC-64A Norseman

FRom Joe Baughers serial site

5344 (c/n 335) to salvage Jul 13, 1944

and also

http://pweb1.mts.net/~donmag/Aircraft.htm

I wish I had found this site earlier – But it would have only give a ‘clue’

Ian interesting

I think there is a typo for HK500 and HK510 in ‘Wiltshire Airfields of WWII’
as HK510 was with 256 Sqn in Italy

But all we need now is the Norseman serial, but I am getting a picture how the aircraft has been identified variously as ‘Mosquito’, ‘Canadian’ , ‘de Havilland’, ‘twin engine British’ etc as the 2 separate incidents on the same day are getting confused

Paul