The Peak District as an area

The Peak District lies between the cities of Manchester and Sheffield, which are to the West and East of the National Park respectively. Forming the southern end of the Pennine hills, the park covers a wide area and variety of landscapes.

The northern end of the park is dominated by the high moors of Kinder Scout, Bleaklow and Saddleworth, which is known as the Dark Peak, due to the Gritstone rock that forms the hills in the area. Between these high moorland plateaus are steep sided valleys several of which contain reservoirs. A few aircraft ended up flying up these valleys in poor visibility and quite simply ran out of valley. Also the western edges of Kinder Scout, Bleaklow and Saddleworth fall away steeply to form escarpments, here the ground rises from about 300ft to between 1500ft and 2000ft. These edges claimed their share of aircraft with several flying straight into them. While the area is not very high in terms of what is found elsewhere in the UK during WW2 many training flights, particularly from RAF units based in the Midlands, passed over this area and the combination of aircrew inexperience, high ground and night flying often in poor weather, made accidents inevitable. Aircraft returning from operations over Europe to the RAF bases in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire also crashed in the area after overshooting their bases at night, being forced to descend as their fuel tanks ran dry. Also the area lay on the busy air route to and from the USAAF air depots and repair bases in the North West and the operational bases in the South East. The majority of the crashes occurred in the Dark Peak and being less accessible more was left at the crash sites and remains to this day. The south of the National Park is mainly Limestone and is known as the White Peak, again due to its geology. This area is mainly fields and is easily accessed so little if anything survives at the crash sites of aircraft in this area. However there are some areas of moorland in the south of the Peak District where the small remains of some aircraft can be found.

The National Park Authority surprisingly do not publicise much if anything about the air crashes that happened with the area that is now covered by the Park, unlike the Brecon Beacons (who are the only National Park in England or Wales to publicise the locations and stories of air crashes). However the Ranger Service do run guided walks to some of the crash sites during the course of the year, these are mainly to the Meteors on Sliddens Moss and the Blenheim on Bleaklow.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

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