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An eyewitness account

The compiler of this website has received an e-mail from an eyewitness to the crash. I won't name the person for privacy reasons, but I include it here as it is a unique account of the crash although it differs from the official report in many important  areas.  The eyewitness remains adamant about what they saw.

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"I was in the garden of our home in Stanton watching the Wellington bomber banking sharply when the wing fell off.
In all probability I was the only witness.
The aircraft came down directly and struck the ground in a field in Upthorpe. The wing floated down more gently, spinning slowly round, and landed further along just inside Waltham led Willows in a field belonging to the Martineau family.
It was a Sunday afternoon and the aircraft had aboard some young ATC lads from the Newmarket area who were being given experience of flight.
The plane exploded on impact.... Smoke and flames rose and ammunition was cracking off.
Some time later a lorry arrived from Honington RAF station and standing in the back was a figure dressed in an all enveloping asbestos suit. Clearly there was nothing he could do, and anyway the lorry went into the ditch as it attempted to negotiate the gateway to the field.
The ATC lads were given a military funeral and registered as killed on active service.

May I just add that there were definitely no other aircraft in the sky; no "fighters". Thus the pilot was not taking "evasive action" It was indeed a steep turn. The aeroplane was doing a steep turn to port, to the left. The starboard , right hand, wing was uppermost, and this was the wing that broke away. The plane came down nose first immediately and vertically and fast and hit the ground within seconds, probably within ten seconds. Anybody watching would have known that there was absolutely no possibility of the crew parachuting out. Furthermore there was no fighter aircraft circling or anywhere in my sight that could have witnessed the accident. If there had been they would not have been expecting or hoping to see parachutes it was not that sort of event I'm afraid.

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At about that time Stanton members of the Royal Observer Corps were invited to have a fly around in a Wellington bomber by the station commander at Honington, these flights I believe being on a Sunday when people were not at work."

Eyewitness account: Text
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