2007 Royal Air Force Puma crash

On 8 August 2007, a Royal Air Force Puma helicopter of No. 33 Squadron, crashed in a wooded area near to Hudswell Grange, Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire, England. The crash resulted in the deaths of three service personnel, and injuries, some serious, to the other nine service members aboard the helicopter. A coroner later attributed the crash to "inadequate administration, airmanship and discipline on the part of the Royal Air Force." The surviving pilot was court-martialled, but was given a suspended sentence, partly due to him being a paraplegic as a result of the crash.

Incident

The aircraft had been detached from RAF Benson (where No. 33 Squadron had been located at that time) to RAF Leeming in North Yorkshire for a training exercise in and around Catterick Garrison. Onboard were nine trainee soldiers who were only four weeks into their training at the Infantry Training Centre (ITC), which is based at Catterick Garrison. It crashed near to a farm at Hudswell Grange just before 21:00, and later the MoD stated that all personnel were in hospitals in either Newcastle or Middlesbrough, after a rescue effort involving helicopters from RAF Boulmer and RAF Leconfield, and an RAF Mountain Rescue team from RAF Leeming, in conjunction with civilian rescue services.

The aircraft was described as flying low and erratically, so much so, that another military crew in a Chinook helicopter radioed the crew and told them to "calm down". Witnesses to the helicopter's crash described it as pitching suddenly sideways, crashing into brush and woodland, and then breaking into three pieces. According to the Board of Inquiry (BoI), the helicopter continued on a forward momentum along the ground for 200 m after its initial contact with the ground, and that one of the pilots and the loadmaster died at the scene, with one of the soldiers aboard dying 48 hours later in hospital. Both pilots had been strapped into their seats, but the seats had been thrown clear of the helicopter. Nine other service personnel aboard were taken to hospital.