Little Baldon air crash

The Little Baldon air crash occurred on 6 July 1965 when a Handley Page Hastings C1A transport aircraft operated by No. 36 Squadron Royal Air Force, registration TG577, crashed into a field in Little Baldon, near Chiselhampton, Oxfordshire, shortly after taking off from RAF Abingdon. The flight was captained by Flt Lt John Akin. All 41 people aboard, including six crew, perished in the crash, making it the third worst air crash in the United Kingdom at the time.

A subsequent inquest jury returned a verdict of accidental death. The inquest found that the accident was due to metal fatigue of two bolts in the elevator system.

Flight history

On the day of the accident the Hastings flew from its base at RAF Colerne, Wiltshire to RAF Abingdon, where it picked up a number of parachutists undergoing a short voluntary parachute course. The intention was to drop them over RAF Weston-on-the-Green, after which the aircraft would land at RAF Benson. There were 24 RAF and 11 Army passengers. They included eight RAF parachute jump instructors, three RAF air loadmasters, 13 other members of the RAF, three senior NCOs from the Parachute Regiment (two of them members of the Territorial Army), and seven Parachute Regiment recruits and a Royal Artillery gunner from the Airborne Forces Depot at Aldershot. Two of the instructors were members of the RAF Falcons parachute display team.

The Hastings took off from Abingdon about 1600 hrs. One eyewitness reported it flying in company with two RAF Armstrong Whitworth AW.660 Argosy heavy transport aircraft. Eyewitnesses in the village of Berinsfield reported seeing it fly over, then lose height or dive. They reported the aircraft "weaving from side to side", "its wings wiggled" or "its tail wobbled" before the Hastings climbed steeply out of control. It then fell with all four engines still running and crashed into a field at Little Baldon called Hundred Acres, about 4+1/2 mi east of Abingdon and 6 mi southeast of Oxford. The aircraft hit the ground on its back and burst into a ball of flame, killing all six crew and all 35 passengers. It was reported from RAF Abingdon that the pilot, Flight Lieutenant John Akin, had radioed that his aircraft was having control trouble before the radio went dead.

The first people to arrive on the scene included Arthur Ware, one of the occupants of Little Baldon Farm Cottages, and George Powell, a farm foreman. Ware said:

"I found wreckage scattered all over the place. I saw many bodies, and a helmet like the ones used by paratroops coloured bright red. Some of them looked as if they had tried to jump. I could see collapsed parachutes with the cords at full stretch. I could see there was nothing I could do for anyone."

Another witness was Lily Pearce of Chiselhampton, who saw the crash from her garden at Marylands Green, about 400 yard from the site. She called her husband Frederick, who in the Second World War had been a member of an RAF crash rescue team. He said:

"I ran across the field but when I got to it, it was obvious no-one could have got out alive. It was just hopeless. Bodies and wreckage were scattered everywhere; flames were still pouring from the wreckage."

A search for survivors was hampered by a tall crop of barley. The two Argosy aircraft circled the crash site for almost an hour. They were joined by helicopters from nearby RAF Benson, including one from the Queen's Flight, all of which were used to search the field.

The first civilian police and fire crews reached the scene within minutes, and were joined by RAF fire crews from Abingdon and Benson and other personnel. Civilian fire appliances came from three fire brigades: Berkshire at Abingdon and Didcot, City of Oxford at Oxford and Oxfordshire at Watlington.