A muddy walk with Tricia to follow the last moments of the fight of Hawker Typhoon Ib R8633.
257 Sqn High Ercall, Shropshire were just starting their conversion from the Hawker Hurricane onto the new and impressive Typhoon but it was a conversion to a plane with an unknown fatal fault later resolved to make it one of the best ground attack aircraft of WW2.
R8633 took off on the warm afternoon of 29thJuly 1942 the pilot F/O Willian .McDunnough RCAF was to take the plane on a local aerobatics flight, just before 16.45pm a local school boy watched an aircraft dive suddenly. The tail broke off at the rear of the fuselage and the Typhoon snapped onto its back falling at high speed into the ground near the small hamlet of Sugdon, the remains of the tail fell nearly a mile away by Isombridge , later investigations came to the conclusion that the planes port elevator detached causing the loss of the tail .
Sadly F/o McDunnough a popular and good pilot lost his life in the crash and was buried within sight of the crash at High Ercall’s St Michael and All Angels church.
Today a pleasant 2 mile walk passes the field where the main part of the plane fell which is now under a Beet crop, and then on to where the tail impacted. Though nothing shows of this loss on the ground, in the church you can find McDunnoughs grave next to 2 other RAF Graves in a quiet corner
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