Nowadays RAF rescue teams are more likely to be involved in climbing rescues than in the aircraft crashes which were the original reason for their formation. In peacetime there are fewer aircraft flying and these possess improved navigational aids. But despite the lower flying intensity Snowdonia still takes toll of aircraft, partly because Valley (where pilots are trained) is so close to these three-thousand-foot hills. In the nine months from February to October, 1956, three Vampires crashed in this area: one in the Carnedds, one on Mynydd Mawr, south of Snowdon, and one in the sea. All the pilots were killed.

A less tragic crash was in October 1956 when an Army Auster came down above Aber and the pilot was extremely fortunate not only in escaping with comparatively minor injuries, but in having witnesses to his crash. Some walkers went to his assistance, and then summoned the team.

But on the whole the days are gone when slow aeroplanes crash and their crews may survive with minor injuries. There are few survivors from the crash of a modern jet - although the possibility of the successful use of ejection seats lends as much urgency to the search for a jet crash, as in the old days when the survivors might be in the wreck. So urgent, in fact, that two, and even three, teams may be called in for the operation.

At 5.16 pm on December 9th, 1957, Valley was informed that a Canberra jet bomber was overdue at its base. The team was brought to immediate readiness, and the teams at Harpur Hill and St. Athan were put on stand-by. The aircraft had been in radio contact with a Ministry of Supply station on top of Drum at the northern end of the Carnedds. This had lost track of the Canberra a few miles north of Puffin Island when it ran into a squall of rain. The island was eight miles from the MOS station. The last thing heard from the pilot was that he was packing up and returning to his base at Pershore in Worcestershire.

The weather was grim: cold, with heavy falls of snow and more forecast. With the possibility that the ejection seats had been used, it was vital to receive an early report of the crash. A radio appeal was broadcast and, as always happens on such occasions, the police were inundated by reports from all over North Wales. The one that seemed most reliable at that stage came from Blaenau Ffestiniog, so the team drove there through falling snow and along mountain roads where old slush was freezing hard. The people who had reported bangs in the mountains were interrogated, but Flying Officer Seeley, then officers in charge, didn't think these reports genuine. Not that they were fabrications, but mistakes: quarry blasting or range firing, not an aircraft crash. The team settled down in the charge-room at the Blaenau police station, while Seeley manned the telephone. At 2.0 am a call came through from the Conway police. They had two witnesses whose reports were detailed and promising. Lees drove over the icy Crimea Pass to investigate.

The first witness was Oswald Jones, a young farmer from the village of Ro Wen. He had been shepherding that afternoon in Cwm Dulyn, on the eastern flank of the Carnedds (see page 7). The cloud was down and it was snowing heavily. At about 3.0 pm he was on the upper slopes of Foel Fras when he heard an explosion. His dogs jumped and stared up the cwm in the direction of the noise. He had heard no previous sound of an engine, but he assumed that the explosion was that of an aircraft breaking the sound barrier. He thought no more about it until he was told of the radio appeal late the same night. Then he informed the police.

The second report came from a man called Adams, an overhead linesman employed by Manchester and North Wales Electricity Board. He was was working above Dolgarrog that afternoon when he saw an aircraft, which he identified as a Canberra, flying below cloud at 3.0 pm. (Cloud base was about 2,200 feet and the mountains here are over 3,000 feet). Adams was in the cwm next to Jones.

When he'd heard these reports, Lees rang Seeley at Blaenau Ffestiniog to bring the team round to the Conway Valley. Continue to page 2