Originally Posted by
B Fraser
Yup, it was a Met Research Canberra and the cause was attributed to a wrongly aligned navigation aid that displaced the runway threshold to some point offshore. The ejection was made some twenty feet below sea level.
I'm familiar with this accident as my late Father, M/Plt Carl Stubbs was flying one of the Whirlwinds, scrambled to winch the three crew members from the Canberra.
He was interviewed re the rescue and said sea conditions were flat calm with no wind, which wasn't ideal for a wet winch. I found this account elsewhere on the internet.
On 21 February 1962 the Canberra B.2 aircraft WJ582 used by the Meteorological Research Flight (MRF) crashed into St Andrews Bay, while on approach to RAF Leuchars. On board this flight were the pilot, Flying Officer Herbie Marshall, the navigator Flight lieutenant Don H Gannon, and Allen Lock, a civilian member of MRF staff.
The aircraft was returning from a flight up to 70 degrees North, examining stratospheric warming at altitudes of up to 48,000ft. On the return to RAF Leuchars, the crew was advised of bad weather so Lock moved from his normal seat to the ‘rumble seat’ to provide additional navigational guidance to the pilot on the approach. This was normal procedure in such conditions
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On the first landing attempt, they passed through cloud base at 200 ft having over-shot the runway. The pilot then climbed up and went around for another attempt. On this second attempt, the aircraft passed through cloud base over St Andrews Bay with no sign of the runway. The pilot attempted to pull up, but the aircraft’s tail caught the water, causing it to break off, throwing the rest of the aircraft into the North Sea.
The plane reached the sea bed (40 ft underwater) and the pilot ejected. Somehow Lock was caught up in the pilot’s ejector seat and was carried out with him. This was incredibly lucky as the rumble seat where Lock had been sitting was not an ejector seat. Following the ditching, the pilot inflated the dingy and made his way to the navigator (who was clinging to the wreckage of the aircraft) and to Lock. While the crew was wearing survival suits to protect against the cold, Lock recalls that his hand was badly cut and the North Sea in February is a cold place to be!
The crew was in the water for about 30 minutes while two helicopters were scrambled from RAF Leuchars to rescue them. After being rescued, Lock spent six months in Bridge of Earn hospital in Perthshire, before being transferred to RAF Headley Court in Surrey for a further ten months until June 1963. Lock then returned to work with MRF, but didn’t undertake any more research flights.