Crash of D.H.Venom at Fighter Weapons School, RAF Leconfield, Yorkshire in 1955
I was lucky enough to be standing right by the edge of the runway with a camera when this happened. The camera, an RAF K24, used 5" wide roll film, was originally designed for aerial photography, with two hand grips, a trigger, and a large crank for advancing the film. It weighed about 20 lb. and was not ideally suited to high speed action photography!.
This was not something I normally did. I was a pilot, not an official photographer, but I had signed out this camera to record the performance of a new towed-target launching system we were developing on the Trials Flight.
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Image 1
I
was watching this Venom land, saw its nose wheel collapse, and started cranking
the camera as fast as I could - so fast that the camera generated static shown
as lightning marks in this image.
Image 2
When
the nose wheel collapsed it forced the guns in the nose back into the fuel tank,
which ruptured. As it skidded past a few yards away, I captured the instant the
fuel caught fire.
Image 3
After
it passed, leaving a trail of burning jet fuel, I started running towards where
it was coming to rest, hoping like hell the pilot would be able to get out by
himself.
Image 4
Arriving
out of breath, before the fire truck, I was enormously relieved to find the pilot
had already bailed out and was standing on the upwind side watching the blaze.
In this image, efforts to extinguish the fire had not been successful. The cockpit
canopy has melted and streams of blazing fuel are still pouring out of the belly.
Image 5
The
fire was hard to put out since the airfield's main fire truck was being repaired
and the only one available was this small auxiliary with a limited amount of foam
and CO2 extinguishers. Here you see the fire suppressed in a fog of CO2 while
the aircraft is being turned to point in a safe direction. The guns were still
loaded and the ejection seat still armed, so there was real danger of explosion.
But everyone got lucky, particularly the pilot and photographer!
