Wellington Mk1c
RAF Serial: L4290
148 Squadron
Pilot: Flt/Off Wilson (killed)
Second Pilot: P/O Barton (killed)
W/T Operator: A.C. Lowery (killed)
Date: 21 July 1939
Place: Milbourne Port, Dorset

The crew was taking part in a cross-country navigation exercise from Stradishall to Plymouth and back. Wilson had already flown 80 hours in Wellingtons at night and was considered an experienced pilot. Barton had just 2 ½ hours blind flying experience in Wellingtons.

Villagers in the picturesque Milbourne Port first heard an aircraft making ‘a loud whining noise’, before they saw an aircraft then came out of cloud and dived straight into the ground a few hundred yards east of the cemetery. An explosion shook the ground and the glow of a fire lit up the surrounding hills. L4290 had crashed, taking its three man crew to their deaths.

The initial conclusion of the Court of Enquiry was that the inexperienced Barton was at the controls at the time of the crash and that he had lost control when trying to turn out of a cloud. Significantly, the Court also recorded that the Wellington had a tendency to become nose-heavy in a turn, which would develop quickly into a dive from which it could take considerable height to recover. These were early days for the Wellington and later it was discovered that it suffered from ‘rudder overbalance’ that caused the rudder to lock to one side and the aircraft to enter an unrecoverable spiral dive.