Glad you liked my little thread, Sturmvogel. Gatty and Wiley Post must have flown right past my window just before they landed at RAF Sealand on their round-the-world flight. I definitely wasn’t around, nor was the house, but it overlooks most of the Dee Estuary and I have counted up 30-plus crash sites viewable from it. They include an He 111 which, I am told, is visible occasionally, depending on sand and tide, several Spitfires, a force-landed Botha which was not salvaged till 1953, a Mossie with an NZ crew, a Beaufighter (engines buried under by-pass road according to local rumour!), a Wellington, a Blenheim shot down in error and a Tiger Moth whose pilot was never found.
The most intriguing story, however, is connected with a Stinson Detroiter named Endeavour and crewed by Capt Walter Hinchliffe and film and stage actress Elsie Mackay. They attempted the east-west Atlantic crossing in 1928 but were never seen again after a last sighting by a lighthouse keeper at Mizen Head, Eire. Four months later, a smelling salts bottle was found on a little frequented stretch of the Dee foreshore below where my house is now. The bottle contained a note reading “Goodbye all. Elsie Mackay and Capt Hinchliffe. Down in fog and storm”. Little importance was apparently attached to the discovery of the bottle and no attempt was made by the authorities to check the handwriting with that of either of the two missing people. A strange tale which is quoted in the excellent book Wings Across the Border by Derek Pratt and Mike Grant.
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