Sea Venom collision at Chivenor Air Day

[Chris Royle]

Any of you good people out there, "of a certain age", who may have witnessed or otherwise know anything about an accident I witnessed at RAF Chivenor Air Day, possibly sometime around 1956 or 1957, where 2 FAA Sea Venoms collided, with, I believe, the loss of the 2 observers, but pilots banged out and were rescued from the estuary, probably by a 22 Sqdn Whirlwind, also based there.
Some years later I heard a "story" that on the evening previous to the accident, there had been a disagreement between the 2 crews, and one pilot was heard to say something along the lines of "I'll make the so and so climb!".
Aged about 10 at the time, the sight of this accident affected me quite deeply. Until then, watching aircraft had been fun (Farnborough, and Exeter Air Displays, which was our "local" airport, as I lived in Torquay at the time) and I had never been confronted with a sight like this.
Can someone date this incident and provide any further information / accident report etc. etc.
Looking forward to hearing the answer. pPrune never seems to fail!
Best wishes,
Chris Royle
(PPL based at White Waltham):ok:

[proplover]

My uncle was on Crash & Resuce with the RAF at Chivenor around this time and Im sure he related a story about two aircraft colliding during either arrival or during the show. Again Im sure he mentioned about the struggle they had getting out of the airfield and down to the beach, there was only bits and pieces to find. Rather disturbing was the discovery of one crewman who had been thrown clear but was obviously past first aid. He related how the local St Johns\First Aid chap arrived, declared that he was the only one qualified to determine who was really dead (depite my uncles years of retreaving alive and dead crew from a large number of accidents). Apparently they pointed out the location of the body, this chap raced over and wasnt seen for some time. After a while my uncle wandered over to find this chap upon seeing the (distressing state of the) body had thrown up all over his uniform and then passed out. They then got this guys mates to streacher him out! Unfortunetly this gave a short lived expectation that the crewman had survived.
Will check with uncle when next in contact if this was the same incident.