B25 Mitchell Crash Mystery
 

Hi,

I sent a Youtube link recently to a friend of the B-25 Mitchell start up at Parry Sound and he told me an interesting story about a B-25 crash at Biggin Hill but was'nt sure of the date. I cant find any reference to it on Wikipedia so have copied out what he wrote as below.

My Story of a Mitchell

My Uncle Bert was an aircraft fitter in the Canadian Airforce during the war and was posted to Canadian Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons - 242 squadron springs to mind. When he came over to stay from time to time I used to take him to the airfields he had worked at. We lived on a hill across from Kenley and not far from Biggin Hill so we went to the airshows there.
One day we were over there and there was a recently restored Mitchell light bomber and he got talking to the pilot/owner/restorer/whatever who was busy explaining what had been done to this aircraft. Uncle Bert was duly asked to crawl all over it and say what he thought about it.
His answer was a long list of 'poor workmanship' points to the extent that he wondered how they got a C of A.
Within about two hours that Mitchell took off for a rehearsal for the following day's show and never made it back -crashing into the side of a hill on which Biggin Hill stands.


Regards

Alan

Could this be the story you are referring to?

Bad day at Biggin



...this being an A-26 Invader rather than a B-25 Mitchell - but the two are similar in many respects - and this accident was on the show day rather than rehearsals...

35 years ago tomorrow.

There may well also have been a B-25 in the display that day as Jeff Hawke still had one or two of his Hanover Street fleet to play with.