In the spring of 1954 a Gloster Meteor NF11 set out from RAF Leeming to conduct a training ‘Sector Reconnaissance’ flight to RAF Scampton and on to RAF Acklington, before returning home to Leeming. The NF11 was a radar equipped night fighter and this mission was to be one of the crew’s first night missions together. However, despite completing their reconnaissance mission and returning to with 5 miles of RAF Leeming, the crew failed to raise the approach controller by radio. The controller was needed to guide them safely down through the cloud which obscured the airfield.
No one knows exactly what happened in the tense minutes from the loss of radio contact until they depleted their remaining fuel. Upon running out of fuel, they descended through the cloud and crashed on the Pennine mountains. Meteor WD778 and both of her crew were lost in the impact. The wreckage wasn’t discovered at the remote crash site until several days later.
The radar operator and navigator on WD778 was a family member, which motivated my initial investigation. This site is a collection of research material into the crew, the aircraft they flew and the what happened on the night of the incident and the ensuing crash investigation.
Gloster Meteor WD778 