Date:	Tuesday 12 February 1952
Time:	10:20 LT
Type:	Gloster Meteor F Mk 8
Owner/operator:	222 (Natal) Sqn RAF
Registration:	WA882
MSN:
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 1
Aircraft damage:	Destroyed
Location:	Oxen Craig, Bennnachie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland -   United Kingdom
Phase:	En route
Nature:	Military
Departure airport:	RAF Leuchars, Fife (ADX/EGQL)
Destination airport:
Confidence Rating:	Information is only available from news, social media or unofficial sources

Narrative:
On 12th February 1952 a Gloster Meteor F.8 single-seat turbo-jet powered fighter crashed west of Oxen Craig with the loss of its pilot, Pilot Officer Brian Lightfoot.

The plane was a Meteor F Mark 8, Serial No. WA882 of No. 222 Squadron, RAF Leuchars. It took off from Leuchars at 9.58 am to carry out a low flying and cross-country exercise. The country was covered in snow and there were frequent snow showers. The late Mrs Lottie Marr of the Mill of Tilliefoure saw and heard the plane. At 10.20 am she saw on the hill a cloud of black smoke, heard a thud and then a much louder bang. It had exploded on impact scattering wreckage over a large area.

A team of seven airmen from no.44 Maintenance Unit, RAF Edzell, arrived two weeks later to bury the wreckage and spent nine days in cold and wintry conditions on the task. They didn’t find all of it

Some of the wreckage from his plane was left at the crash site in a makeshift memorial by his RAF colleagues.Near the crash site there is a roughly constructed stone cairn with bits of wreckage which must have been erected by the RAF lads as a tribute to the pilot. It is this cairn which has been rebuilt to house the pink granite plaque bearing the name of the three who lost their lives - the pilot of Meteor F.8 WA882, and the crew of Westland Wallace K6028, which crashed in the same location on 3rd September 1939.

A memorial service for the pilot of Meteor WA882 was held, with some of his relatives in attendance, on 1 September 2009. To quote the contemporary newspaper report ("The Northern Echo" 2nd September 2009):

"A POIGNANT memorial took place on a Scottish mountainside yesterday, more than 60 years after a North Yorkshire pilot crashed there.

John Brian Lightfoot was 22 when he died when his Gloster Meteor Jet came down in a blizzard in the Bennachie Hills in east Aberdeenshire in February 1952. Yesterday’s ceremony was to dedicate a cairn in memory of the three RAF servicemen and relatives from the men’s families travelled from as far away as Canada to be present.

The memorial contains small pieces of wreckage from both planes and was formally dedicated at a simple service conducted by an RAF padre.

Present at the ceremony was Julie Blakey, from Northallerton, who was married to Mr Lightfoot’s cousin, Peter Blakey, and is one of only two surviving members of his family. Also at the ceremony was local historian Jim Sedgwick, who helped the Bailies of Bennachie, a local conservation society for the area, find out more about the North Yorkshire pilot.

Mr Sedgwick, chairman of Northallerton and District Local History Society, found the pilot was the son of a wellknown Northallerton ironmonger, Monty Lightfoot and his wife, Juanita, and had been a student at Barnard Castle School.

Mr Sedgwick said: “The Bailies of Bennachie have treated us absolutely wonderfully while we’ve been up here. It’s a sad occasion, but at least this accident is now going to be remembered.”

Mr Lightfoot had been flying on a training mission from RAF Leuchars when his plane crashed on the 528-metre Oxen Craig in the Bennachie Hills."

The official cause of Brian’s crash was put down to “poor definition of snow covered mountains in the prevailing conditions”. He was 22 when he died and was buried in a Commonwealth War Grave on 16th February at Leuchars Cemetery with full military honours. One of the 20 mm cannons from Meteor WA882 is still hanging from the ceiling of the Bennachie Visitor Centre. As at 1 August 2020, the largest piece of remaining wreckage is a two-metre square wing section (see link #14)

1. Halley, James (1999) Broken Wings – Post-War Royal Air Force Accidents Tunbridge Wells: Air-Britain (Historians) Ltd. p.125 ISBN 0-85130-290-4.
2. Royal Air Force Aircraft SA100-VZ999 (James J Halley, Air Britain, 1983 p.15)
3. Last Take Off; A Catalogue of RAF Aircraft Losses 1950 to 1953 by Colin Cummings p.221
4. 222 Squadron ORB (Operations Record Book)(Air Ministry Form AM/F.540) for the period 1/1/1951 to 31/12/1954: National Archives (PRO Kew) File AIR 27/2475 at https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C2505113
5. http://www.ukserials.com/results.php?serial=WA
6. http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/9906480.Memorial_to_pilot_60_years_after_crash/
7. http://www.aircrashsites-scotland.co.uk/meteor_oxen-craig.htm
8. http://www.bailiesofbennachie.co.uk/discover-bennachie/
9. http://www.wtdwhd.co.uk/Bennachie%20Meteor.html
10. https://ktsorens.tihlde.org/flyvrak/oxen.html
11. https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeenshire/1819859/memorial-walk-for-raf-crew-who-crashed-into-bennachie-the-first-british-casualties-of-the-second-world-war/
12. https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=101456
13. http://www.aviationarchaeology.org.uk/news
14. Photo of wreckage 1/8/2020: https://www.flickr.com/photos/markmcewan/50177512408/in/photolist-2js1Shh-2d8sqkd-25GNtN1-FW2eHU-7dKYx8-sAXN9T-7dKYPg-7dKZqn-xw3XMP-7dKZ5a-2jRqZwR

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
31-May-2008 19:38	JINX	Added
07-Jun-2008 11:51	JINX	Updated
17-Jun-2008 10:59	Anon.	Updated
19-Jan-2012 02:22	Nepa	Updated [Aircraft type, Operator, Source]
23-Jul-2017 18:16	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Time, Aircraft type, Location, Departure airport, Source, Narrative]
23-Jul-2017 18:18	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Narrative]
23-Jul-2017 18:18	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Time]
23-Jul-2017 18:24	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Narrative]
30-Dec-2019 21:09	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Source]
26-Feb-2021 20:19	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Departure airport, Source, Narrative]
26-Feb-2021 20:21	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Source, Narrative]
19-May-2021 09:10	Anon.	Updated [Aircraft type, Location, Operator]