By MEng Ian Harvey July 2021

Some of you may have read my article in the Stories Section of the Website.

This is an update to that article.

I decided to do more to track the history of my namesake late Uncle, F/O William Ian Harvey RAFVR.

Firstly I got his service record from Cranwell.

Some service details from his record from Cranwell

More service details:-

This part suggests No 56 course, 30/4 to 2/8 1943

Whatever, he was killed on 10 May 1946 in Halifax Mk 3, PP349 of NO 1665 HCU.

The accident report, like most of the above somewhat difficult to read, detailed the crash site as

“2.5miles SW of Linton-on-Ouse, 300 yds N of Tancred Farm”

Recently we were touring in that area so decided to look for the crash site, or, at least, get some information as to its whereabouts.

I started with Google Earth, that wonderful tool of our age, had it existed in 1946, the site would have been a Lat/Long to many decimal places…..

I decided on this location based on that information …

This pic shows Linton on Ouse top right, I drew a circle centred on the station signals square out to 2.5miles radius. The other location of 300 yds N of Tancred Farm I drew as a vertical line of 300yds in length.

This gave a second pic:-

There is a mark on the field just to the right of the word Earth, near the wood. The, now, owner of Tancred Farm who has owned it since 1988 told me he had ploughed that field many times and the mark is inconsequential. That left the bare area in the wood which I have marked with a pin.

This is not actually on Tancred Farm land but he directed me the road to the North, I was able to park on a side road, seen to the left of the pin, on the roadside.

From there I was able to walk down the left side, as seen in pic, of the wood.

This is the wood from a different viewpoint, the mark on Google Earth is more or less centred in it.

This being all I could achieve in the timescale, we set off to York and visited the excellent Yorks Air Museum, at Elvington, home of the only surviving Halifax.

Although complete, this is a construction of many different individual aircraft, indeed the centre fuselage was lifted by Chinook from the Isle of Lewis, where another crashed, a crofter had used it for a chicken house since the crash.

Nevertheless this is all there is of this Bomber Type. This is a Mk 3 with the radial Hercules Mk16 engines.

I managed to get into the aircraft, here are some photos……

                                                  

The museum were very helpful and have one member, not there on my visit who has identified the crash sites of all Halifax Bombers, he has my email address so have hopes he may contact me with, perhaps, a more accurate crash site location

Ian Harvey

5/7/2021