Deadly Training

On the bitterly cold night of the 16th November 1943, at the height of the Second World War, the residents of the Lancashire town of Chorley were awoken by the deafening sound of aeroplane in trouble.

George Telfer, who lived near the crash site, recalled, "The steady throb of the engines became irregular. A screaming sound followed as the machine tore itself apart in a rapid descent. There was a final crash, and then silence".

Chorley is a small Lancashire town, which for most of the war had been spared the bombing which had been focused on the nearby cities of Liverpool and Manchester. However, the quiet of that particular winter's night came to a screaming halt, as Special Constable Swift, one of the first people on the scene, reported:

“That night was not a very dark one, neither was it stormy, yet for several nights previous, it had been intensely cold, with frost up to 15 below zero. I was on night-duty; it was a starry night, with white cumulous cloud hiding a three quarter moon. I had been given 1.30am as my supper period, which we had in the Chorley Police Station. It was a half hour break and I remember the heavy drone of an aircraft at what seemed overhead, as I entered the station. Half an hour later, I left again in company of a Police Patrol Driver, to resume a given area of patrol.

Strange it seemed, the noise of the aircraft was still hanging around. My friend remarked how cold it must be up there, we could not see anything of course. For ten minutes or so, I had his company, he was finishing his night’s duty and I was alone, making my way to a Police point expecting a visit there from the Sergeant or Inspector. It so happened that I was passing a branch of Leyland Motor Works, when the noise of an aircraft, increased tremendously. I looked up, there descending, almost over my head was an aircraft. It bore a yellow and green light on each wing tip, and I could see two engine cowlings on each at the front. My personal feelings at that moment was enemy aircraft – bombing the Leyland Works – but the plane was then only 2 or 3 hundred feet above with both its engines running at full throttle. It went over the houses in front of me [and] disappeared. Two or three seconds later a crash came, it shook the ground where I stood, though the crashed plane was found 5 miles away, from that point. The time I shall never forget was 28 minutes past 2 in the morning."

Earlier that evening, the Wellington Bomber had left from the Operational Training Unit at Wymeswold in Leicestershire on a night time training exercise. The exercise the aircraft was taking part in was known as a Bullseye mission. The pilot of the bomber was Flight Sergeant Joseph B. Timperon. He had arrived in Britain 8 months before, from Alice Springs in Australia, on attachment from the Royal Australian Air Force. Timperon, like most airmen during the Second World War, was young, at only 24 years old.

Special Constable Swift's report continued, "I ran to the telephone kiosk 30 yards ahead of me, when I heard running feet approaching, it was the Police inspector and the Sergeant. They had heard all, but had not seen anything. I confirmed a plane crash, and rang for a car. By 2.30AM, along with the Inspector and Sergeant, we were on the way to the countryside. The inspector asked me for an area likely to contain the crash, so we arrived at the edge of Anglezarke Moor, and proceeded to search the woods, but had to give up. We returned to the Police Station for reinforcements and left again at 7am with a party of 6. I was given the lead so I made immediately for the Moors again and with coming light, continued the search. I discovered a rabbit dead, but not frozen, so we alerted all, and ahead of me was seen something unusual. It was a turret (rear gunner), and a petrol tank. Twenty yards to my left was a Wellington Bomber lying on its back."

Timperon had got into difficulty whilst flying low over the moors. He had wrestled with the controls, trying to lift the plane above the fast approaching summit of Winter Hill, but the aircraft would not rise. The engines, as Special Constable Swift had heard, were at full-throttle at the point of impact. The crash was so violent, wreckage was scattered over a huge area. The RAF investigation which followed decided that the tragedy had most likely been caused by a ‘loss of control in cloud, possibly due to icing.’ Icing is where, in very cold conditions, ice forms on the leading edge of the aeroplane's wing. This can make a plane sluggish and difficult to manoeuvre. It can also increase the weight of the wings, which could have led to the planes structural failure as it descended into a high speed dive.

Special Constable Swift end his report with: "We recovered five bodies, a sixth was later found beneath the front of the bomber. We had to search for identification purposes, discovering the first to be an Australian, another if I remember rightly came from Sheffield, the rest from the South of England. They had in their possession identity cards, this proved to us that the bomber had not been over enemy territory. I remember too, one of the crew had a long envelope, on the front was printed ‘Your photographs - one 1/2 dozen' – inside [were six] photographs of the airmen and a pretty young lady. That must have been one of the last things he did, collect his photographs, for none had been taken out.

You can have my opinion for what it is worth. The crash was not due to engine failure, for at no time did I hear any unusual noise from the engines. I would say the icy conditions forced the plane to crash. I had to make a report and plan of the crash, but that was the last I heard of the incident, I was not called to any Air force enquiry. One of the Bomber’s engines was missing, but recovered 12 months after in a wood, some 10 miles away in [the] Darwen area, Lancashire”.

Darwen is a town near Blackburn on the other side of the moor. There is also a theory that this engine was lost first, leading to the aircraft crashing near Chorley. Whatever the cause, six airmen lost their lives that night in the sky over Chorley. In June 1955, almost 12 years after the crash, a simple stone memorial was erected at Lead Mines Clough, an area of Anglezarke Moor near to the crash site. It is a fitting memorial to the six men who died in that Wellington Bomber when a training exercise went fatally wrong.