de Havilland Dragon Rapide G-AERE of British American Air Services crashed near Ettersgill, County Durham on the 20th June 1939

 

Ferruccio S. Appi	Pilot	Killed
James Elmslie	Wireless Operator	Killed
John Lionel Crouch	Passenger	Killed

 

British American Air Services had been chartered to provide an aircraft to fly John Crouch, a jockey retained to ride horses belonging to HM King George VI, from Heston in West London to Newcastle where he was due to ride Cameron in the 2.30 Stagshaw Stakes at Gosforth Park where he was given odds of 8-1.

The aircraft was seen in the York area but failed to arrive at Woolsington, that evening the BBC broadcast an appeal for sightings or information and a search for the missing aircraft began with the RAF making an aerial search. On the 21st two men from Forest-in-Teesdale, the newsagent and postman, spotted the burnt out wreckage on high ground to the north of Ettersgill. The bodies of the three men were located in the vicinity of the wreckage and were recovered with the aid of a horse drawn sledge.

John Crouch had been due to marry less than two weeks after the crash, according to newspaper reports the invitations had been sent only days before his death.