Prototype Bucc crash, New Forest 1959

[52049er]

Hi all

Just wondered if anyone had any further information (especially the exact crash site) for Buccaneer XK490 that crashed near Lyndhurst in 1959? It was on a test flight from Boscombe Down and unfortunately both crew were killed after ejecting.

Buccaneer (http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/Buccaneer.htm)


There is an ongoing debate by those living near an actual crash sight in the Forest as to whether it was this Bucc or a Javelin that left a (still visible) big crater in the forest.

Thanks

52

[Agaricus bisporus]

an actual crash sight

You'd think identification would be simple it if they'd actually seen it, wouldn't you...

[Old-Duffer]

My info gets no closer than 'near Lyndhurst' but the local press would likely have photos and any child over the age of 6 at the time would tell you the exact spot.

The crew was: Mr W L Alford, a NASA test pilot no less, and Mr J G Joyce, a Blackburn FTO.

The root cause was the pilot doing something even the makers hadn't explored and then losing it after a stall at 10000 feet.

O-D

[52049er]

Thanks O-D.

My first post was not the clearest! I've seen the crater in the ground (still fenced off today) - but the debate was over the type of a/c. Some say it was a Bucc, others that it was a Javelin.

The Bucc seems to be the most likely as the site is only 3 miles from Lyndhurst (though it is much closer to other villages), though I have found evidence of a Forest Javelin accident too. The equally limited info on that seems to indicate a site closer to Ringwood, so I'll go with the former. I'll have a look at the local press stuff too.

cheers

52

[BEagle]

On 26th February 1958, Gloster Javelin FAW7 XH714 operated by A&AEE Boscombe Down crashed in the New Forest, near Kingston. Unfortunately both crew members were killed.

[henry crun]

Beagle: Broken Wings says pilot ejected due to a malfunction, nav was killed during ejection, inferring that the pilot survived.

[VX275]

The description of the Javalin accident in the Air Britain Flight Testing Accident book records the pilot still being attached to the seat at ground inpact, so he didn't survive. The Nav too had seat problems so presumably the Squipers were in trouble.

[henry crun]

Broken Wings records 1 fatal in that accident; it is also an Air-Britain publication, which shows that sometimes it is hard to know who to believe.

[RegDep]

52049er:

The Buccaneer accident on 12th October 1959 Buccaneer (http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/Buccaneer.htm) and the Javelin accident on 26th February 1958 Gloster_Javelin (http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/Gloster_Javelin.htm) are different events, so you are looking for more information on the Buccaneer and confirmation which crater you have seen? Correct?

[Redmist 3]

Hello guys.
Just picked up on your correspondence about the Buccaneer XK490 crash. I have on file a cutting from the New Milton Times which states that the jet, a Blackburn NA39 strike aircraft, exploded in the air and crashed in woods in an area called Busketts Lawn Inclosure. Hope this info may help. Redmist.

[Warmtoast]

Another contemporary press report:


Mr William Lewis Alford who was killed when the Blackburn NA39 strike aircraft he was piloting crashed at Ashurst, Hampshire, on Monday [13th October 1959] was a civilian attached to the Office of Naval Research in the United States, said a U.S. Navy official yesterday. Mr Alford had been in Britain temporarily working on naval research. He was married and lived in Hampton, Virginia.
An inquiry into the crash, in which another man also died, is being held.
The wreckage, which was scattered over a large area, was examined by Ministry of Supply and other officials yesterday and an R.A.F. guard was posted.

[mastershot]

The other man to die was John Joyce, a Blackburn flight-test observer.

[52049er]

RegDep - correct!

Redmist, Warmtoast - thank you. Thats the info I was after. Funny thing is, I was brought up in the area as a plane mad kid and only found out about the crash site on my last visit home in August.

[david parry]

Control was lost when the pilot flew the aircraft in an unauthorised low speed blown condition and simulated single engine failure. It stalled at 10,000ft, spun and impacted the ground inverted near Lyndhurst, Hants. Both crew ejected too late and were killed

[Monsun]

Have researched both accidents for books and there is not much I can add that hasn't already been said.

The location in the Court of Inquiry for the Javelin is given as Sandford, just south of Ringwood. Accident was caused by inadvertent ejection of the pilot caused by the top latch of his ejection seat being held in the un-locked position by an incorrectly stowed safety pin. As the seat was not correctly secured it moved up the rails during negative 'g' and fired. The navigator's ejection was delayed and his seat may have been damaged on the way out.

Peter

[grey george]

When I was a young child (in the late 60’s early 70’s) my mothers aunt lived in Woodlands Road Ashurst, as young children we spent many days at that house and walking with my mothers aunt in the woods. One of the rides we would walk along was a grass ride (now gravel) this meant it could only be easily walked in high summer. Towards the western end of Busketts Lawn Inclosure there was a lot of masonry piled across the ditch and into the woods where a deep crater was fenced off. (in recent years this fence has been replaced so some where in the New Forest works department there must be records of what happen here.) Our mother’s aunt told us that this was where a “spotter” plane had crashed and the rubble was put in when they removed the wreckage. It was always a spooky place as a child. As an adult I have searched for more information and believe this to be the site of the crash of XK490 Buccaneer on the 12/10/59. I think the South Africans were trying it out and were doing low speed manoeuvres with an engine shut down, due to the blown wing not producing lift with the engine shut down the aircraft flipped over. I think the pilots ejected while inverted so were not found at the crater site. (Local childhood rumours said the bodies were never found). Although my mothers aunt was a member of the civil defence with a telephone warning monitor in her house I think it was unlikely, given the cold war situation that many real facts were made public about the crash of an aircraft with A-Bomb capability. It has to be remembered that although to many this seems a short time ago, in those few decades the New Forest has seen a massive increase in population. Woodlands Road had only residential traffic (about two cars an hour at peak time) and it was very unusual to meet another person while walking in Busketts Lawn Inclosure, so even a jet crash could be cleaned up with little local notice. I am sure somewhere there must be official records but I’ve had little joy in tracking them down (without parting with a fee). I am not a fan of the disneyisation of the New Forest but feel this site may benefit from a memorial plaque.

[buttrick]

You'd have thought that Martin baker would have re-designed that top latch over the years, and provided something that isn't fatal if it fails or is incorrectly fitted. There have been top latch incidents every couple of years since MB started making seats. One of the latest was the Torando Nav/WSO on an air test from Marham, not long ago.

[gordonToo]

By chance I happened to see the last seconds of the Buccaneer as a 10 year old boy from the playground of Lyndhurst Primary school 5 miles or so from the crash site.

I remember noticing the plane fly overhead whilst I made my way into the school field for a football match. Then, for some reason I looked up again and saw the same plane in a vertical dive. It was all over in a few seconds as the plane went straight down and disappeared into the trees around Ashurst. I can't remember hearing an explosion or seeing any parachutes but a few years later I did find the impact crater which I remember as being very large, conical in shape and maybe 30 feet or more deep.

I also remember telling my teacher and my parents what I'd seen but they didn't believe me until a report appeared the next day in the Southampton Echo!

[buskettsblues]

The past few years I have been trying to track info on the fatal Oct.1959 crash-my father was one of the pilots. My family received little information from the Blackburn Corp. or NASA about the cause. I have just recently learned the name of the copilot -as a child I did know he had children similar in age to those in my family. Reading comments from you and others has been helpful in my search.
The crash site, as you describe paints a "peaceful" place in my mind; glad to know it went down in such a place w/out further harm to others- I recall being told it "blew up in the air."
Cordially,
Buskettsblues

[JohnS43]

Good day, Buskettsblues.

I presume your father was Bill Alford of NASA. if you read 'Buccaneer' by Tim Laming, he gives a good report on the accident. However should you have difilculty in attaining a copy and would like to email me at [email protected] I wil copy out the article for you. Also 'Buccaneer by a Maurice Allward also gives a report on the accident. I should warn you though that it implies that the pilot carried out an unauthorised manoeuvre, which caused the crash.

If you want more info, please contact me.

Regards John Stevens, ex RN Fleet Air Arm. Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, England.

[Johnafize]

In about 1959 I saw smoke rising from the forest. I was about 1.5 miles SE of the crash on a ridge. I later found the crash site. It must have come in non vertical as some pine tree tops 30m north from the crater were missing. The crater 10m diameter was filled with water. I found a piece of anodized aluminium. This year I found the site at this link https://www.google.com/maps/ms?msid=210956128637964009544.0004c20baa07c474c9871&msa=0&ll=50.893722,-1.553535&spn=0.031455,0.084543

[Ginger John]

Like your member who was in Lyndhurst at the time of the crash, I was also 10 but travelled from Lyndhurst to Southampton and back on the bus every day. My memories are now 50 years old and for some reason this came up whilst at my sons 40th birthday party in Norfolk yesterday. I was reminissing about the place I grew up in, ie The New Forest, and recalled that on the way home from school one day saw a large pall of black smoke coming out of the enclosure between Ashurst and Lyndhust on the right of the main road. We already knew the whole swathe of forest from the back of the golf course (The Racecourse) to Ashurst, looking for trout streams, tank traps and bomb craters so as soon as we could, we rode our bikes across the forest and up to the cottage where they later sold Xmas trees, then went looking for the "Russian Spy" plane that had been shot down nearby!! Amazingly we found the crash site quite quickly and although there were some men working around the area we got right up to the crater where smoke was still rising up through the damaged trees all around. I also remember finding scraps of twisted metal and boken glass (or perspex) and saw some cloth material in the trees. We thought that this must have been from parachutes but I don't recall why. I do remember being tremendously exited by our discovery and went back a few times in the next few years, often searching for lost ammunition in the surrounding undergrowth. By then the crater had water in. I even recall taking my father there once and him telling me not to go back. Reading some of the other accounts, I don't recall any rubble or cordoning off, or, anybody guarding the site, but then I do recall getting into lots of forbidden places around Lyndhurst during my youth eg the undeground WW2 dormitories in the grounds of an official building behind the large Hotel at the bottom of Lyndhurst High Street and the frog infested swimming pool in the deserted Hotel along the road towards Swan Green! So being chased away from these "adventures" was quite common. Anyway keeping to the subject, my abiding memory was that it was a Russian Spy plane called a Blackhawk and that the 2 pilots had been killed in the crash. 54 years on and I now know more of the truth..fascinating.

[bonzo26]

On this day aged thirteen I was travelling by bus from my school at Brockenhurst to Ashurst where I would walk the one mile to my home in Hazel Grove, off Woodlands Road. We were approaching Ashurst when the bus was stopped for some time by police and we observed vehicles - I cannot remember what type - entering the forest in front of us. Eventually the bus proceeded and I made my way home. My mother had become aware of a "plane crash" in the New Forest so after tea I set off to find the site with a friend. It was not difficult to find but within about 50 metres of the site on one of the gravel "rides" that facilitate movement in the Forest we were stopped by a military man who said we could not go any further. He went on to say that a search was being conducted for a notepad that had come from the plane and if we were to find it we had to hand it in without fail! Knowing the Forest well it was easy to outsmart those guarding the site and we were soon able to see the deep crater, still with smoke coming from it, and all the recovery work.

Later on after recovery work had been completed and the crash site fenced off we would visit and scrape around with sticks and always find wiring, metal parts and lots more buried in the clay. Years later in the 1980's I took my sons to the site and even then we recovered debris.

A couple of years ago I visited the National Archives at Kew and inspected the file containing the accident report on XK490. It was interesting to see in the correspondence how the various interested parties, principally RAF and Blackburn, were trying to make sure that they did not take the blame. As a naive reader it seemed to me that Mr Alford made a very convenient scapegoat! Included in the report were distressing details of the fatal injuries sustained by the pilot and observer. Kew will let anybody who is interested inspect the file for free.

Interestingly in 1956 I had witnessed a Whirlwind Helicopter XJ395 fall from the sky and crash just 400 metres or so from where XK490 came to ground. As a 10 year old I was first on the scene and stood there frightened and not knowing what to do. It was my first sight of a dead body too. On my visit to Kew in respect of XK490 I also examined the Whirlwind file. I am involved in investigating accidents in another transport mode and again I was struck by the apparently superficial investigation that made little effort to get to a root cause and once again conveniently blamed the pilot.

[kennyodu]

hi busket blues, your either my roomate from ODU or his brother, been curios about your dad's accident and found you here.so far I found the same info as you, but will let you know if I find anything to help. hope you guys and mom are well!

[Iwanderson]

Only just found this site. My uncle was the flight observer who died in this accident. J G Joyce. Would like to visit the site of the accident one day. I was born 6 days premature and he died on the day I was due to be born, so I never knew him but heard a lot about him from my grandad and mum. By all accounts an amazing person.