Thanks all, didn’t mean to sound curmudgeonly before.
To put my cards on the table, this was a local flight – staging between Exeter and St Eval. Cloud base was between 1,800 and 1,500 feet (from met reports of the day), from 5/10 to 10/10.
A direct route would have tracked right across Dartmoor, which goes up to 1,800 feet or so. Dangerous if they were using ground way points for navigation. The one survivor of the three said they descended to 300ft (must have been AGL) ‘near Bovey Tracey’. Cloud was occasionally down to 200ft AGL, so I imagine this was to get a view of the ground for navigation purposes. My contention is they were tracking so as go around the high ground, to the South. That’s the only way Bovey Tracey would make sense on a flight from Exeter to St Eval. (All this needs a map to visualise). However, the survivor said that he suddenly saw the ground rise up ahead of him.. and he climbed, and headed back to Exeter. No-one saw the others again.
Now, if one applies the 11.8 deg variation applicable at the time to the shortest ‘safe’ high-ground-skirting track from Exeter (as if an error had been made.. The survivor said they were lost at the point he left the flight around Bovey Tracey – probably because the visible ground features didn’t tally).. one has the remaining two flying at a height around cloud base right into the heart of Dartmoor, and not around it – and colliding with the high ground immediately East of Fox Tor Mire. Which is what our (second hand) eyewitness report says as well. They reported TWO aircraft flying over their farm near Dartmeet, and not being high enough to clear the ground to the South West (that they, the farmers, knew was there but which could have been invisible) That matches the hypothetical track very well.
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