Reg. I only flew Halifaxes Mk 1 and Mk2, never with the larger fins and rudders.
Further to my piece on the jammed elevator, I have now found the article in The Telegraph (date unknown) about the Hermes crash.
Plane controls jammed.
CRASH REPORT
A small extraneous object, caught in the elevator mechanism, jammed the controls of the HERMES aircraft in which three people died when it crashed near Bishop's Stortford in April last year, a report to the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation concludes.
Mr J W Duggan, Deputy Chief Inspector of Accidents, says the object was not found and it was impossible to identify it, but it deprived the pilots of control of the aircraft and caused the accident..................
DEEP SCORE MARKS.
The four-engined Hermes, which was making a test flight after engine change, crashed about six miles from Stanstead Airport on April 1, 1958, fifteen minute after take-off. Its pilot, Skyways' chief test pilot, Captain G.D. Rayment, aged 38, had radioed that the controls were completely jammed.
Descending in a series of dives and climbs the aircraft plunged into a field at Manor Farm, Measden Green, and burnt out, killing Captain Rayment and the second pilot Captain J. A. West, aged 38, and Engineer Officer N. Bradley, aged 35.
An examination of the wreckage revealed deep, bright score marks on the moving part of the elevator mechanism, indicating that a hard object, such as a small split-pin had jammed the mechanism.
Mr Duggan states that the object was presumably displaced when the aircraft hit the ground, but several small extraneous objects ( among them an inch- bolt and spit-pins were later recovered from the stern frame bay.
He added that an inspection of another Hermes revealed a similar assortment of such objects.
AND we thought we had only to contend with night-fighters and Flak! fredjhh