Aircraft Down: Landings, Crash Landings and Rescues

by Alec Brew

  His team split up and spread out across the hillside, towing sledge stretchers on which they could bring down the two injured men. They fired flares at regular intervals, and it turned out later that they passed within 400 yards of the wreck without seeing it in the darkness and mist. They covered about 20 square miles of moorland searching Edale Head, Jacob’s Ladder and Green Clough. When a sledge fell over a ravine, they were forced to call off the search until the morning.

  Ted Croker was taken down the hill to hospital and then moved to the RAF hospital at Wombwell. His head wound, caused when he was thrown through the windscreen of the Oxford, required eighty-eight stitches. However, there was one small positive outcome to the episode. While in South Africa he had lost a tooth playing football and had had a replacement installed held by gold caps on each side. He hated the appearance of the gold caps and was glad to see they had been knocked out in the crash. He took the opportunity to have them crowned again without the gold.

  The search for the wreck resumed again at first light, rockets being fired to let the poor men on the moor know that help was on the way. The searchers eventually found the wreck at 10 am. Both men were still alive, though frostbitten, and very relieved to see that Ted Croker had brought them help. After twenty hours of lying on the freezing moorland, the two men were carried down by stretcher for about a mile to a point where Crichton had managed to get his jeeps. The jeeps relayed them down the moor and they were taken by ambulance to the RAF hospital at Wilmslow, Cheshire. Because of the frostbite it was deemed necessary to amputate Robinson’s broken leg.

  62. The tangled wreckage of the Oxford as it was when the rescue team found the crash site. It’s hard to believe anyone survived.

  Because Ted Croker had been able to go for help they had survived their ordeal. In contrast, Flying Officer Craig, and LAC Hempstead, the two men in the Defiant crash four years earlier, and fewer than 8 miles away to the north, had had to wait for rescue. They had not survived, even though their ordeal had been in the middle of summer. The Dark Peak can be a forbidding and dangerous place at any time of year.

  After Ted Croker recovered from his injuries, spending some time at the aircrew rehabilitation centre at Loughborough College, he signed professional forms for Charlton Athletic in 1948. However, he was only to play eight first-team games for them in the season 1950 – 51. Shortly afterwards, he was called back to the RAF because of the Korean War, and did not play for Charlton again. After his return to civvie street he played in the Southern League for three seasons, but a severely fractured leg put an end to his football career in 1956.

  Before becoming Secretary of the Football Association he developed a successful business career, and during this period he had a frightening echo of his crash in the Peak District. He had sold his Company to Liner Concrete, whose head office was in Gateshead. He became a director of the parent company and needed to make frequent trips to the north east. Occasionally, he hired a light aircraft, if there was any need for haste. His Private Pilot’s Licence had lapsed so he had to hire the owner-pilot as well as his aircraft.

  63. The rescue team bringing down one of the three survivors.

  On about the third occasion he hired the aircraft to take him from Staverton Airport in Gloucestershire to Newcastle Airport they were flying over the Pennines in cloud that reached down to the hill-tops. Suddenly, the engine gave a frightening cough. Memories of his previous experience flashed before him, and the adrenalin pumped into his veins. The pilot switched fuel tanks, but the engine continued to splutter. Then Croker’s wartime training came into use, as he looked round for the trouble. He noticed that the outside air temperature thermometer was reading zero and they were flying in cloud, the perfect conditions for carburettor icing. He suggested to the pilot that it might be a good idea to switch on his carburettor heat, and when he did so the engine soon smoothed out.

  He then demanded that the pilot fly due East until radio beacons told them they were over low ground, and then descend below cloud cover. After a while they spotted a hole in the clouds and dived down, finding themselves in one of the Pennine valleys that run eastwards. They flew east until they could turn north once more, keeping below clouds all the way to Newcastle.

  Some years later, the three men who had survived that winter night on Brown Knoll, Ted Croker, George Robinson, and John Dowthwaite, climbed back up together to the site of their crash. They reflected on how lucky they had been, when so many others had perished on those desolate moors. They drank a toast to their own survival.

  4. Ted Croker returning to the air in the 1950s, in a de Havilland Chipmunk.

  CHAPTER 20

  What You Do When the Engine Falls Off

  There have been a number of recorded occasions when engines have fallen off aircraft in flight, only for the pilot to make a successful forced landing, but almost all were multi-engined aircraft. For this to happen to a single-engined aircraft, and for all aboard to survive unscathed, would require a remarkable conjunction of favourable conditions. An aircraft with excellent low-speed handling, with a highly experienced test pilot at the controls, would help enormously.

  Robin Lindsay Neale was born on 24 January 1912, and was educated at Caterham. He first became connected with aviation when he worked for Selfridge’s Aviation Department. He later worked for Brian Lewis & Co. at Heston. In 1931 he learned to fly at Croydon, getting his ‘A’ Licence. After a short period of working with Chamier, Gilbert Lodge & Co., in 1935 he set up his own aviation consultancy business, under the name Lindsay Neale Aviation Ltd. He was Managing Director, and he owned his own Puss Moth.

  65. Robin Lindsay Neale about to test-fly a Blackburn Roc in 1940.

  He also became a director of Dart Aircraft Ltd, test-flying their single-seat light aircraft, and undertaking other freelance testing. Among the aircraft he flew during the 1930s was one of the de Havilland Comets. During this time, when he was only 19, he broke his pelvis in a motorbike accident, which left him with a permanent limp, as his right leg was slightly twisted and shortened. At the outbreak of the War he closed his business and joined the RAF, but was released to work as a test pilot for Boulton Paul Aircraft Ltd, arriving on 1 January 1940. At the time Boulton Paul was building both Blackburn Rocs and its own Defiant, and later built Fairey Barracudas.

  He was a well-liked character in the factory, and was fond of a practical joke. Rather than fly a Defiant or Barracuda solo, he would often offer people in the flight shed area a ‘quick flight’ in lieu of ballast. His ‘quick flight’ would then involve him wringing every aerobatic manoeuvre from the airframe that it would manage. The volunteer ‘rear gunner’, would emerge looking very green indeed, and sometimes worse than that.

  His regular daily task was the flight-testing of new Defiants and Rocs, and later on Barracudas as they rolled off the production line. The more advanced testing of new developments was usually done by the chief test pilot, Cecil Feather. The taxiway, which ran from the flights sheds at the rear of the factory round the corner of Pendeford Hill to the airfield, Wolverhampton Airport, was well used in both directions and this had unfortunate consequences in July 1940.

  On the 27th at about 11.05 am, Cecil Feather was taxiing out in the prototype of the Mark II Defiant, N1550. The aircraft had had its first flight only seven days before, and was the first stage in a programme to give the Defiant a much-needed power increase. At exactly the same time, Lindsay Neale was taxiing a production Defiant Mark I, N1639, from the airfield, where he had just landed after a test flight, down the taxiway back to the flight sheds. The two collided head on, severely damaging both aircraft. Neither pilot was hurt, but the two ‘gunners’, providing ballast in the turrets, both received minor injuries, and had to be taken to the Royal Hospital.

  66. Robin Lindsay Neale about to test-fly a Defiant, with some of the Boulton Paul flight shed crew.

  The incident would have been amusing except for these injuries, and the fact that the accident delayed the Defiant Mark II
development programme by several weeks. The second prototype Mark II, N1551, was not ready until later in the summer. Very sharp letters were received from the Air Ministry.

  Lindsay Neale’s first experience of a crash-landing came in 1941 when he was flying an old Boulton Paul Overstrand. The Overstrand, K8176, had been retained by the company for turret development work, having the prototype Defiant turret and then a SAMM 20 mm cannon mounting in the nose, replacing its own pneumatic turret. On 30 May 1941 the aircraft, newly camouflaged with the paint still wet, took off from Wolverhampton on a flight to Edinburgh, with Lindsay Neale at the controls, and Slim Bunkell, Boulton Paul’s flight shed foreman, as the only passenger. As they neared Blackpool they found themselves in a thunderstorm, and so Lindsay Neale decided it was prudent to land at Squires Gate.

  As they were coming in to land the aircraft was struck by lightning, and Lindsay Neale, blinded by the flash, landed offset and not on the runway. The aircraft toppled into a ditch and crumpled into a heap. The sudden shock of the thunder, the flash and the crash scared the living daylights out of Slim, and Lindsay Neale found him in the wreckage with his hands over his eyes saying ‘Old Nick’s got me at last’. As a postscript to the crash, a more accurate description than a crash-landing, someone sent Lindsay Neale’s wife, Rosemary, the ‘remains’ of the aircraft in a matchbox – just a piece of the fabric.

  With the retirement of the chief test pilot, Cecil Feather in 1945, possibly through illness brought on by stress, Lindsay Neale was promoted to his position. The company was then in the process of overhauling 270 Wellington bombers and converting them to T10 navigation trainers. Having to fly Wellingtons, rather than the slightly more agile Barracudas or Defiants, only partially curtailed Lindsay Neale’s penchant for aerobatics. While demonstrating one at an air show at Wolverhampton Airport in 1948, he did a low and very fast pass at about 20 feet across the airfield and then pulled it up into a loop! When he landed, everything loose inside the aircraft, was rattling around. Everything that should have been hung up was dangling down and all the acid had run from the batteries!

  While the Boulton Paul factory was full of Wellingtons the company was developing its Balliol advanced trainer. The Balliol was designed to Spec. T.7/45, which called for a turboprop three-seat advanced trainer, to replace the wartime Harvards and Masters. The Balliol was ordered in prototype form, with either the Rolls-Royce Dart or the Armstrong-Siddeley Mamba turboprop engine. However, slow progress with both engines led to the decision to fit a Bristol Mercury radial to the first Balliol prototype to undertake early flight testing.

  On 30 May 1947 the Balliol prototype, VL892, took off on its first flight with Lindsay Neale at the controls. He flew from the grass runways of Wolverhampton Airport, alongside the Boulton Paul factory. The aircraft proved a lovely aircraft to fly, though rather underpowered with the Mercury.

  A few weeks later, while the second prototype Balliol, VL917, was being fitted with a Mamba, which was more advanced in its development than the Dart, Lindsay Neale took his family off on a summer holiday to the south of France. He borrowed a Miles Messenger, G-AJEY, from Miles Aircraft, and with his wife, Rosemary, sister-in-law, Hazel, and children, Jenny and Jeff, took off for the flight across the Channel and south over France.

  On 28 June they had reached south-eastern France, near the town of Bait, and were cruising along at 4000 feet. Lindsay Neale was dozing in the front passenger seat, with Hazel, then only 19, in the pilot’s seat. Jenny, only 3, was on her lap. Suddenly, there was a huge bang. The aircraft reared up into an alarmingly steep angle and there was a total loss of power. Lindsay Neale woke up with a start, and automatically grabbed the stick and pushed it right forward before the aircraft stalled, still not entirely clear what had happened.

  68. Miles Messenger G-AJEY after Lindsay Neale’s ‘engine-off’ landing.

  69. Close-up of the Messenger’s fireproof bulkhead, showing the broken engine mounting.

  Hazel handed young Jenny back to her mother in the rear seat, who then hauled Hazel back with them. This was definitely not the thing to do as Lindsay Neale was fighting to hold the aircraft level, so he put on full flap, and ordered everyone to pile into the front seat, and to haul the baggage forward too. Luckily, his wife had packed everything into an old parachute bag, which was far handier to heave forward than a suitcase would have been.

  The centre of gravity, though still further aft than it should have been on a Miles Messenger, was now in a more manageable position, and Lindsay Neale had enough control to glide down and begin to look for a field in which to make a forced landing. They were now aware that there did not seem to be much aircraft forward of the windscreen, which explained the sudden silence. They no longer seemed to have an engine. Lindsay Neale still had the control column right forward, but was able to affect a controlled landing in a field just large enough. They scrambled thankfully out, and examined the aircraft.

  They discovered that the fixed pitch, one-piece, wooden propeller had cracked and one blade had broken off. The massive out-of-balance forces had torn the Gipsy Major engine from the airframe, complete with its mountings and cowlings. It was lucky that the aircraft was a Messenger, which had marvellous low-speed handling qualities, and that such an experienced test pilot was at the controls, who could react calmly and logically. It gave new meaning to the nautical expression ‘Finished with engine’.

  As a memento of this alarming experience the Miles Aircraft Company presented Lindsay Neale with a model of the Messenger – The Messenger involved, G-AJEY, was considered beyond repair.

  I imagine test pilots take holidays to get away from such excitement, but Lindsay Neale did not settle into a quiet life even on his return. The second prototype Balliol was nearing completion, with its Mamba engine, and Boulton Paul was in competition with Avro, and its Athena, to fly the world’s first single-engined turboprop aircraft. On 24 May 1948 Balliol VL917, with Lindsay Neale at the controls, won the race, making its first flight, but it ended in a disastrous crash-landing.

  70. The model Messenger presented to Lindsay Neale by the Miles Aircraft, together with the propeller blade that broke off and the aircraft featuring on the cover of Aeroplane Monthly.

  Lindsay Neale was bringing VL917 in to land at Wolverhampton, and was letting down over the eastern end of the airfield when the propeller disced. With the blades acting as air brakes, the aircraft fell out of the sky. All would have been well if the undercarriage had not just clipped the iron railings along Marsh Lane, the boundary to the airfield, which caused the aircraft to crash and to break into several pieces. Lindsay Neale broke his leg in the crash in the same place it had been broken before the War. It was an ignominious end to a historic aircraft. By coincidence, a Boulton Paul photographer, Jack Endean, had filmed the aircraft on take-off, and began filming again a second before the crash, capturing a remarkable piece of film.

  The crash did not affect the Balliol programme, as the decision had already been made to power production Balliols with war-surplus Merlin engines, which were far cheaper and more reliable than the early turboprops. With Lindsay Neale still recovering from his broken leg, the first flight of the first Merlin-powered prototype, VW897, was made by his assistant, Peter Tisshaw. Kingsley Peter Henry Tisshaw had been born in Putney on 25 September 1923, and was educated at St Paul’s School and Aberdeen University. In 1941 he joined the RAF and received his flying training in the United States. From 1942 he spent three years as a flying instructor at various stations in Great Britain, before being posted to Turkey in December 1947. He was demobilised in January 1947, and after taking his ‘B’ Licence he joined Boulton Paul as assistant to Lindsay Neale, as a replacement for Flight Lieutenant John O Lancaster, who had moved on to Saunders-Roe, and later Armstrong Whitworth. Tisshaw’s main duties were flight-testing the Wellington T10s before delivery. He took over the Balliol testing while Lindsay Neale was recovering, and demonstrated the aircraft at Farnborough.

  67. The Mamba-engine
d Boulton Paul Balliol T1 after its first flight crash, clipping the railings seen in the background on landing.

  71. A photograph of the Merlin-powered Balliol T2 prototype, signed by Lindsay Neale with comment ‘This dived at 470 mph - Some trainer !’ This was a poignant remark as he was killed diving this aircraft at about that speed.

  When Lindsay Neale had recovered, having had his leg set properly this time, he rejoined the testing programme. In particular, he tried to solve a control problem that had arisen. It was found that elevator reversal occurred when 320 mph was exceeded in an out-of-trim dive. On the afternoon of 3 February he took off with Peter Tisshaw to examine this problem and undertook a dive in the region of 400 mph from around 14,000 feet. The windscreen of VW897 disintegrated, possibly because of a bird strike, and the aircraft crashed at Coven not far from the airfield, killing both pilots.