Very Interesting point – that you finally managed to put these fanciful stories to rest! There are many similar stories concerning sites in the Lancashire area, usually involving Harley Davidson motorcycles being buried – “straight out of their crates” 😮 I have to say it is probably one of the reasons I have not really got involved in this area of aviation archaeology – as the stories seem to have become so widely circulated, that as soon as you mention any interest in a site, it is assumed that is what you are after and there must be a substantial financial motive for what you want to do – which makes any negotiations with landowners somewhat difficult to say the least! 🙁

Hi James – Rossendale was close to the haunt of the long defunct Pennine Aviation Museum (Bacup) and many of their forays were up to High Ground Crash sites – could your uncle have been connected to them? Also there is still an active Rossendale Aviation Society, though apart from talks, they don’t really go in for Aviation Archaeology, though a few members also attended some of the Pennine group’s activities.

You could try my website which has a page on Lancashire High Ground Sites, though there are others featured on other parts of the site. Also Alan’s site features a few – perhaps photos from different angles might jog the memory? Then of course there is a certain book – see link below in my signature – you could always borrow it from your local library!

Sadly the propaganda exercise did not go according to plan. The aircraft in the photo Lockheed YP-80A “Shooting Star” 44-83026 (cn 1005) crashed at Bold near St Helens whilst flying from Burtonwood on the 28th January 1945, resulting in the death of Major Frederic Austin Borsodi. See: http://laituk.org/YP-80A%20%2044-83026.htm

Major F. A. Borsodi served initially as a Second Lieutenant with the 86th Fighter squadron, 79th Fighter Group in the Mediterranean Theatre of operations from 1942 rising to the rank of Captain, then Major and commanding officer of the Squadron up to October 1943. He flew the P-40 ” Warhawk” and was credited with shooting down three enemy aircraft and a third share in another, completing some 130 missions in this time. He was sent back to the US and became chief of fighter testing from 1943-45 at Wright Field in Ohio, where he was the first man to witness and film the compressibility shockwave on an aircraft wing while power diving a P-51 Mustang up to Mach 0.84 from nearly 40,000 feet. He was aged 28 at the time of his death and was buried with full military honours at the American Military Cemetery in Cambridge, plot C row 4 grave 73. During his service as a combat pilot he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with three Oak Leaf Cluster and The Air Medal with fifteen Oak Leaf Clusters and the British DFC. Major Borsodi entered the service from Connecticut and left a widow with two young daughters, the youngest only 1 month old. It was believed if Major Borsodi had survived, it is likely he would have gone on to be a test pilot on the supersonic test program.

So this seems to have been released to the press: Found: The plane wreck that could solve a 50-year-old mystery – BBC News

If this is correct, then hats off to the team that have found it ! Surely this must have been like finding a specific needle in a haystack full of needles?

Having personally searched for a crash site for 25+ years before finding it, I do know perseverance can pay off – though I would have preferred the 10 years of talking to fisherman in pubs, than the countless weekends of methodical grid-searching with a Foerster!

Many years ago I followed up on a rumour of two aircraft that lay derelict in Blackburn, Lancashire just after the war – It turned out they had been Horsa assault gliders and I even managed to trace the owner – who also owned a well known (at the time) model shop in the town. After the war, she had wanted to re-open the business, but could not source plywood as it was restricted for housing use only, so she hit upon the idea of buying two surplus gliders locally and stripping them – apparently they were available at around £1 each and over the next two years they were systematically stripped for plywood on an area of waste ground – the plywood rather fittingly going on to be resurrected in hundreds of model aircraft built by enthusiasts in the town. When finally stripped of all usable plywood the last remains were burnt on bonfire night I believe and when I went to the site there was still a largish bare patch with no vegetation growing on it – I found a few very rusty fittings possibly off the Horsas, but they literally crumbled to the touch – the fire and years of exposure having taken their toll – an the site is now built on. It did make me wonder where locally the Horsas had been stored and sold off? I know many Hadrians were stored at Warton and later scrapped or sold off and whether any other were bought locally and re-used – could there could still be a Horsa garage or allotment shed somewhere local?

Set of photos of crash site of LL114: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjxASmzv

On the night of 7th to 8th February 1944, Halifax LL 114, coded NF-P of 138 (Special Duties) Squadron took of from its base at RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire. This Squadron was was tasked with dropping agents and equipment of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) inside occupied territory. The aircraft was to undertake a mission to drop supplies to the French Resistance at the Drop Zone (DZ) codenamed “JOHN 35” – to date it is not known exactly where this DZ was as it does not appear in any records, though DZ “JOHN 33” and “JOHN 34” are in Saone et Loire Department some 200 Km to the North-East.

Though we don’t know the location of the DZ the aircraft was trying to locate, it is certain that none of the Resistance on the Vercors that night were expecting LL 114, when it was heard passing low over the village of Autrans in thick fog and during a snow storm. It was five days later when members of the local Resistance found the partially burnt out wreck, in the forest 8 kilometers North of the village, with weapons and ammunition scattered around and still containing the bodies of the crew, who had all been killed instantly in the impact with a cliff face at the end of the valley. They were unable to identify the bodies and buried them close to the crash site and salvaged what they could and hid the site so well that it was never located by the Germans.

In August 1944 the bodies of the crew were recovered, identified and re-interred in the cemetery at Autrans, where their graves remain today. Substantial sections of the wrecked Halifax lay in the forest for several years after the war, only occasionally visited by the curious. However, in the late 1950s the wreck came to the attention of a group of travelling scrap dealers, who spent a summer cutting it up and transporting it down the steep forest trails, only leaving the steel parts and many scattered fragments at the crash site. Some of these remains including a couple of propeller hubs and several parachute supply containers remained gathered at the bottom of the cliff below the impact point and in 2004 the memorial was erected – though the accompanying information board shows the aircraft as being a Lancaster! A few parts can also be seen in the Resistance museum at Vassieux-en-Vercors.

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Sorry for the silence on this one but we agreed to a publicity embargo until the episode was released – will be able to give more details and answer questions after the show is aired on Monday