Airspeed Oxford Mk.II X7064 of No.11 (Pilot) Advanced Flying Unit crashed on Moel y Gamelin near Llangollen on the 20th February 1944

 

Robert Meade Sinclair	Flight Sergeant, RCAF	Pilot (Instructor)	Killed
Christopher Bewick	Sergeant, RAuxAF	Pilot (u/t)	Killed

 

During the evening of the 20th February 1944 Oxford X7064 took off from RAF Wrexham with two crew aboard for a night training flight. The flight was authorised as a one hour dual aerodrome survey flight which meant that with two crew onboard the aircraft would remain in the immediate vicinity of the airfield, and certainly within view of its Pundit light, for the duration of the sortie. It was planned that the aircraft would operate at about 2,400ft, some 600ft below the cloud base that night.

The only communication between the two crew and ground control at Wrexham was as the aircraft was taxying from its dispersal point for take-off, after this there was no further radio traffic recorded.

At 21:25, an hour after X7064 had left Wrexham, the navigation lights of an aircraft were seen by the Royal Observer Corps at a low altitude heading in a north westerly direction over their observation site 1 mile north west of Ruthin. A few minutes later the aircraft was seen again heading in the opposite direction at the same height, this course was taking the aircraft towards high ground.

A witness around the village of Bryneglwys a few miles south of Ruthin saw the aircraft circling for a short time before it flew towards the east followed a short time later by a flash as it struck the side of Moel y Gamelin. Moel y Gamelin is an 1,800ft high summit on the ridge to the north west of the town of Llangollen and 12.5 miles away from the airfield at Wrexham.

The crash was soon reported with the R.O.C. reporting that they had tracked an aircraft south of Ruthin which had then disappeared along with the report of a fire being seen on high ground. At about the same time RAF Cark had reported that one of their Ansons was missing on a flight in the region. This information was passed to RAF stations in North Wales with the Mountain Rescue Service at RAF Llandwrog but as the reported location was near Wrexham they took over dealing with the report from near Ruthin, as it turned out this was their aircraft. The Anson from Cark was located on high ground in the Carneddau to the south of Conwy with Llandwrog dealing with that incident.

The cause of crash was put down to the aircraft having left the area immediately around the airfield and as a consequence loss of visual contact with the Pundit light. Also the lack of radio contact with the ground after taxying was highlighted. This was either due the failure of radio equipment or that neither of the pilots used it. No calls for assistance were heard by any ground stations on the “Darky” channel either which maybe pointed to a failure within the transmitter, however this would remain uncertain as the equipment was destroyed by the crash making analysis of whether it was working before the crash or not impossible.

After the crash the bodies of the two crew were recovered to Wrexham and on the 24th Robert Sinclair was buried at Blacon Cemetery in Chester. Christopher Bewick was buried in his home city of Aberdeen.