It is interesting that the ground casualties are listed in the casualty communiques in Flight as Died on Active Service while those on the aircraft are Killed in Action. I would have thought being killed in an explosion such as this would have warranted the usual Killed on Active Service as from a research point of view we tend to discount anyone down as DOAS from aircraft accidents.

Yikes, I was once at a Mildenhall airshow and the crew of an AC-130 were handing out used 40mm cases for free, I still have two on a shelf, one I polished the other is as given (dull metal with AC-130H written on it by a crew member).

Mike

I thought cannons were 15mm (online there is reference to 15.24mm) and above, in the UK that means 20mm because there was never anything intermediate between a .50 and 20mm but in some places there were guns in between, that said I don’t know of anything in the 15-20mm range only the 14.5mm HMG produced in Russia.

I have a note that it is with Aeroventure at Doncaster, it was recovered by the South Yorkshire Air Museum in 1987.

No, but I did come across an Excel spread sheet with the standards on it once, I know it came from the land of the internet but I can’t remember where.

It could have been the first time that a pilot successfully ejected through the canopy of a Canberra, though it was recommended as the preferred method in circumstances such as this (exactly) by the Court of Inquiry into the loss of WH669 in March 1953. In that case the pilot jettisoned the canopy in an inverted dive and seems to have been unable to operate either handle on his seat because of the airflow over the exposed cockpit.

You might want to extend your research to the National Archives and BT 233/253, that file will contain quite a bit of information, if the BT 233 files I’ve been through are anything to go by then you’ll be looking at a copy of the Court of Inquiry, Inquest, AIB investigation, Police investigation and other reports and associated papers.

Jerry, I did, I was more referring to the way the thread wandered a long way from its starting point. The reference to may or may not is that the identity has not been officially confirmed, yes L7056 does appear to be the most likely candidate at the moment, but until it is confirmed it remains just the most likely. A crew list for that aircraft has been given over on RAF Commands, 3 RAFVR and 1 RCAF. If it is a missing aircraft and anything can be found of the crew and identified, bearing in mind the local wildlife will have distributed remains at the time, plus 70 years outside, then hopefully four names can come off the Ottawa Memorial.

One of the aircraft mentioned in that forum thread is one that I tried to visit once, but without suitable footwear it wasn’t sensible to carry on into the mud.