Remembering the day when a Mosquito plane crashed on Shildon

“I was born in 1939 in Redcar but we got bombed out of there and moved in about 1942 to 27, Auckland Terrace, and I remember we were playing out in Garbutt Street and we heard a hell of a racket: there was this plane going up Auckland Terrace, so low he knocked a couple of chimney pots off.”

Last weekend in Shildon, a plaque was unveiled dedicated to the seven airmen who were killed on May 31, 1944, when their Short Stirling bomber crashed out of low cloud into fields where the Jubilee estate is today.

READ FIRST: SEVEN AIRMEN WERE KILLED WHEN THEIR BOMBER GOT CAUGHT IN A THUNDERHEAD

The plaque to the seven airmen who were killed in Shildon (Image: Andy Futers)

But Kenneth’s crash is different.

It took place on January 25, 1946, and involved a de Havilland Mosquito on a training flight from RAF Middleton St George.

“He must have come from Redworth way,” says Kenneth. “He went over the Hippodrome and he was heading up the bank but struggling to keep the plane up.

“He went over the top and disappeared, and then we heard a hell of a bang and saw a cloud of smoke.”

The Northern Echo the following day said: “It appears that the plane had been heard circling round in dense fog, apparently looking for a landing ground. It passed low over the houses and seemed to turn at South Church.

“On its return, it crashed through a tall hawthorn hedge, somersaulted and disintegrated.”

A de Havilland Mosquito, like the one which Kenneth saw crash near Shildon (Image: PA)

It broke up in fields to the west of Adelaide Bank, which runs from Shildon down into South Church.

“We ran up the bank to the reservoir and got 50 to 100 yards from the crash scene; one wing was sticking up in the air,” says Kenneth, who now lives in West Cornforth. “We were turned away when a big green van with a red cross on the side turned up.”

The two airmen, the pilot and his navigator, were killed outright. The Echo said that two women, Miss Lanchester and Mrs Newton of Adelaide Terrace, “were first on the scene and they found the bodies”. A detachment of soldiers carried them off to Bishop Auckland hospital mortuary.

“I worked as a farmer for 65 years, and I’ve worked on that farm,” says Kenneth. “Every time I ploughed that field, I thought of those lads. The hedgeback that they hit is still damaged, as is the one where they found a body.

“I was once asked to plant up those hedges but something stopped me from doing it in those two places – it is a war grave to me.”

The plaque to the seven airmen who were killed in Shildon (Image: Andy Futers)

• Memories 789 told of the crash on May 31, 1944, when seven airmen from RAF Wigsley in Nottinghamshire got caught in a thunderhead cloud as they approached Shildon. The pilot dived so steeply to escape that the tail broke off, leaving a trail of debris a mile long until the plane came to earth where Weardale and Teesdale walks are now on the Jubilee estate. The plaque, unveiled in the community centre, has been erected by local historians led by Alan Ellwood and commemorates the men’s sacrifice.