I came across a photo that must have been given to my father years ago, when we lived in Chilmark. I guess it was taken at the moment when the War Memorial was put up or dedicated, just after World War I, and I imagine that the men are the ones who came back. It might be of interest, not only from the point of view of Chilmark history - is there a village archive? - but with the centenary coming up you might like to have it for your website if you were thinking of some sort of commemorative piece. Maybe there are descendants still in the village. At any rate, here it is, and I hope you can find a home for it.
All good wishes, Felicity Trotman
BAC 1-11 Crash
A BAC 1-11 in British Aircraft Corporation livery similar to the accident aircraft (Source:Wikipedia)
On 22 October 1963, BAC1-11 G-ASHG left Wisley in Surrey on a test flight. Twenty-three minutes later, it crashed on Cratt Hill in Chicklade, killing all seven crew on board: Lt Cdr Mike Lithgow, OBE, Capt R Rymer, B J Prior, C J Webb, R A F Wright, G R Poulter and D J Clarke.
Lt Cdr Mike Lithgow, OB had had a distinguished wartime career, including taking part in the Fairey Swordfish attack which crippled the Bismarck. After the war he became a test pilot. He held several flying records, and at Castel Idris in Libya in 1953 he set a world speed record of 735.7 mph, flying a Swift F.4. At the time of the crash he was Vickers-Armstrong’s deputy chief test pilot.
The prototype plane had been performing stalling tests. At 16,000 feet above the ground it started the fifth test, a ‘deep stall’. However, it could not recover sufficient flying speed, and pancaked on the ground, catching fire almost at once.
Many local people remember this event.
Nigel Forward was 16 at the time. He recollects it was a warm morning, and he was working with his father that morning, pulling ragwort and thistles out of a field at Glebe Farm in Hindon. They saw the plane going over, very low, from the Salisbury direction, and thought it might go into their top field. Then they heard a loud bang, and saw a cloud of smoke. They realized that it had got as far as Great Ridge Wood. They knew Mr Gamm, one of the men working in the wood who ran to see if he could help. He’d been a prisoner-of-war in Japan.
Val Stephens was at Dunworth School in Tisbury. That morning, he was working out in the garden. He saw the plane coming over, very low and thought it would crash. There was a puff of smoke, and very soon afterwards the sound of sirens. He also remembers helicopters. After school, he cycled up to the accident site, but the authorities were turning people away. There was debris everywhere. One of the teachers at Dunworth contacted Boscombe Down: the people there asked that everyone who had seen the plane should write down everything they remembered, and send it to them.
Alan Strange was 14, and was also working in the garden at Dunworth that day. He remembers it was beautifully sunny. He saw the plane spiraling down: it seemed to be directly behind Fonthill Gifford church. As he lived at Berwick St Leonard at the time, he was very frightened, thinking it might have landed on his house, but on the way home Mrs Lond, who ran the shop in Fonthill Bishop, told him it was Chicklade. At the weekend, he tried to reach the site on his bicycle, but couldn’t get near it. Alan’s father was later the first to plough the field, and found it was full of bits and pieces of debris. Some years later, Alan met Jonathan Poulter, whose father G P Poulter had been one of the crew. Jonathan had been born two weeks after the crash. He’d come over from America to see the site.
David Carr, who later became farm manager on the Estate, was working in the woods at the time of the crash. He says ‘I was with two of the farm staff tidying up a straw rick ready to be thatched at Picket Grove East, high up by the Boynton track from Great Ridge Wood.
A BAC1-11 had been flying around practising stalling techniques –flying upwards and then leveling out.
We happened to look across whilst this was happening and suddenly saw that the plane was sliding back downhill – nose up – tail down – just enough to be out of level. I said to the other two “that plane is going to crash”.
It went slowly down and disappeared behind the trees at Cratt with a large cloud of dust and smoke.
We raced across to Cratt as fast as we could – the tracks were rather rough – and when we got there, there was a heap of burning wreckage, which we could not get near because of the heat. We were literally helpless to do anything.
I think all the crew would have been killed on impact.
After a while police and ambulance services arrived and after a while I think the RAF and finally someone from local radio and the press.
I told the police and the press what I saw and that was about all I could do.
The crash site was taped off and guarded and the next day people from BAC were there in force to sort through the wreckage.
I later had a very nice letter from the people at BAC thanking me – I wish I could have done more!’
The man who reached the crash first was Michael ‘Paddy’ Coote. He and Keith Kingsbury were working at the edge of the forest. They heard a crack, and saw the plane coming down like a leaf. It spun round and round, and he thought it tried to level out. It missed the trees and slid into the field, where the plane exploded into fire. The windows blew out, back into the wood. Paddy saw bodies in front of him, but could do nothing. Having worked in a hospital, he had seen some horrible things before, but Keith Kingsbury was so upset he had to take some days off work to recover. Paddy thought that if the plane had landed on the trees it might have been saved, but because it tried to land on the ground it was destroyed. He remembers the vicar from Hindon coming up, and John Morrison (later Lord Margadale), who ordered a fence to be put round the site to stop people getting in. Paddy said that about half an hour after the crash there must have been 50 or 100 people there, who came in from the A350. He thought most of them wanted to help, but some just wanted to see. Some while later he was surprised when the Ministry sent him a cheque for £14, for trying to help.
Les Chaffey was working on he estate at Higher Pertwood at the time. He and another man were out in the fields on tractors when the plane caught his eye. It was going round and round, and he saw it was in trouble. He and his colleague drove their tractors straight up, hoping they could help. When they arrived they found 4 or 5 people there already. Later, the remains of the plane were collected and taken away in plastic bags.
Les’s wife Christine was in her garden, which opened onto the fields, at Pertwood, hanging out washing. She heard the sound of a jet engine, high-pitched and screaming. It stopped and she thought something was really wrong. She saw the plane, tail down and trying to climb. It banked a little, then in the same position it just came down behind a hedge. Before the plane hit the ground, there was a loud crack, like a rifle shot. Then there was a massive explosion, and billowing smoke blew in her direction. Bits of paper fluttered into the garden, some of which she picked up. A couple of days later, the air accident investigators came round, and asked her what she had seen. They told her the loud crack was the emergency door, which was designed to fall off automatically when a plane was in trouble. The idea was that the crew might be able to use the open space to escape, though of course in this case they didn’t. The investigators said the crew had died on impact, before the fire had started. Christine Chaffey says she never heard that the emergency door had been found. She wonders if it is still somewhere in the thickest part of the wood.
The Salisbury Journal records that the rector of Hindon, Bruce George Beale, who was an ex-Naval chaplain, was just starting his lunch when heard about the crash on the radio. He immediately went to the site, and stood alone, praying for the seven dead crewmen until the police and firemen had removed their remains. The paper also confirms Val Stephens’ recollection of helicopters. Apparently many aircraft flew over the crash site that afternoon, mostly taking photos. One helicopter hovered about 30 ft above the crash, disturbing the wreckage with the wind from its rotors, in spite of police attempts to get it to go away.
Clive Fry was a boy in Hindon. He says ‘My stepfather Geoff Merrifield worked for the estate in the wood at Chicklade. …
Hindon was alive with personnel and transport following the crash. Every piece was removed, to be reassembled at Boscombe Down.
Geoff Merrifield helped to plough and reinstate the crash site …. My memories are still clear, the hive of activity in Hindon, the massive lorries brought to take the plane home bit by bit.’
Alan Strange has a collection of cuttings and other memorabilia about the crash, including two letters that BAC wrote to men who had tried to help at the time.
