Date:	Tuesday 5 April 1938
Time:	c. 01:10
Type:	Handley Page Harrow Mk II
Owner/operator:	75 Squadron, RAF
Registration:	K6995
MSN:	HP.54/
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 5 / Occupants: 5
Other fatalities:	0
Aircraft damage:	Destroyed
Location:	Tibthorpe Low Wood, Tibthorpe, near Driffield, North Yorkshire -   United Kingdom
Phase:	Approach
Nature:	Military
Departure airport:	RAF Driffield, East Yorkshire
Destination airport:	RAF Driffield, East Yorkshire

Narrative:
Handley Page Harrow Mk II K6995, 75 Squadron RAF Written off (destroyed) 5 April 1938 when crashed at Tibthorpe Low Wood, Tibthorpe, near Driffield, North Yorkshire. All five crew on board were killed.

On the night of 4th/5th April 1938 this 75 Squadron aircraft was one of two that took off from Driffield airfield at 18.25hrs to undertake a night cross country training flight involving a flight down to the south coast and back. The flight would be between 700 and 800 miles in total. All appears to have gone without incident for much of the flight and both Harrows appear to have been flying the same route and probably together. At 00.25hrs the wireless operator of Harrow K6995 transmitted a message to Driffield to say they were over Hull and there was heavy ground fog.

Just after 01.00hrs another message was received to say that they were nearing base and that the wireless operator was reeling in the aerial cable as they prepared to land. This was the last that was heard of the aircraft. Soon after this time the other Harrow landed at Driffield without incident. With Harrow K6995 then reported overdue various searches began. Aircraft were sent into the air and a land search involving driving around the roads was made but this yielded nothing. At 07.00hrs a local man driving between Hull and Tibthorpe noticed wreckage of an aircraft near Tibthorpe Low Wood and raised the alarm; after driving home he telephoned the RAF at Driffield while his son went to the crash site to await the RAF arriving. It was found that the aircraft had crashed into a field and partly disintegrated. All five airmen on board were sadly killed. I have not been able to confirm who held which position in the aircraft, the airmen's inquest stated that there was a pilot, navigator, wireless operator and two air gunners while the squadron records state it carried two pilots.

As reported at the time in a contemporary newspaper (Timaru Herald, (Timaru, NZ) Volume CXLIV, Issue 21061, 13 June 1938, Page 9 - see link #2):

"VILLAGE TRAGEDY
CRASH ENDS ROMANCE
Behind the death of 29-year-old Corporal Walter Greaves, one of the five victims of the Royal Air Force crash at Tibthorpe, near Driffield, Yorkshire, lies a poignant story of a shattered romance. Greaves was a native of St. John’s Chapel, a Durham county village. His service in the Royal Air Force would have finished in a few weeks, and he planned to be married in July to Miss Eva Rutherford, a girl from the same village, who is a nurse at Sunderland Municipal Hospital. The couple had made all their arrangements for the wedding, their future home had been chosen in the village, and Miss Rutherford had already got her wedding dress and most of her trousseau for the marriage.

She is broken-hearted, as is Greaves’ mother, who told the News of the World: “I received my last letter from Walter on the morning of the crash. I little knew that my boy was dead as I read his cheerful words. I never wanted him to fly,” she added. Mrs Greaves lost her husband in the war, almost exactly 20 years ago. At the inquest, which was held at Driffield, no theory was advanced as to the cause of the accident. “Death by misadventure” was the verdict on Corporal Greaves and on the four other victims. It was stated that the aeroplane, a Handley Page “Harrow” twin-engined bomber, crashed in a ploughed field within two miles of its home station at Driffield. Squadron-Leader Levin declared: "It is practically certain that there was no failure on the part of the aircraft.”

Crew:
Pilot - Flt/Sgt Edward James Merchant RAF (560185), aged 28, of Regent's Park, London. Buried St. Pancras Cemetery, London.
Sgt Ronald George Cowley Marshall RAF (564231), aged 23, of Richmond, Yorkshire. Buried Hipswell Churchyard, Yorkshire.
Corporal Walter Greaves RAF (507414), aged 29, of St. John's Chapel, Durham. Burial St. John the Baptist Church, St. John's Chapel, Durham.
Wireless Operator - AC.1 Ronald Herbert Fish RAF (550326), aged 19. Of Norton (then East Riding of Yorkshire). Buried Norton Cemetery, Yorkshire
LAC George Jeffrey Humphries RAF (561722), aged 26, of Maidstone, Kent. Buried Maidstone Cemetery, Kent.

Tibthorpe is a village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is 5 miles (8 km) to the west of Driffield on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, it lies on the B1248 road between the villages of Bainton to the south and Wetwang to the north. High Wood and Low Wood to the south are a haven for wildlife.

1. Air Britain: The K File - The RAF of the 1930s
2. VILLAGE TRAGEDY: Timaru Herald, (Timaru, NZ) Volume CXLIV, Issue 21061, 13 June 1938, Page 9: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD19380613.2.95#text-tab
3. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=0OlBAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LKoMAAAAIBAJ&pg=2460,3455945&dq=royal+air+force+crash&hl=en
4. http://www.greatdriffield.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=816
5. https://www.baaa-acro.com/index.php/crash/crash-handley-page-hp54-harrow-ii-tibthorpe-5-killed
6. National Archives (PRO Kew) 75 Sqn ORB for the period 1 October 1916 to 31 December 1941: File AIR 27/645 at https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C2503282
7. https://www.yorkshire-aircraft.co.uk/aircraft/yorkshire/york38/k6995.html
8. http://www.rcawsey.co.uk/Acc1939.htm
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._75_Squadron_RAF#1937:_Reformed_as_bomber_squadron
10. https://myplacebase.com/places/view/44603
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibthorpe

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
20-Oct-2009 23:50	JINX	Added
15-May-2012 13:08	ryan	Updated [Source, Narrative, ]
26-Feb-2018 23:21	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Time, Location, Phase, Departure airport, Destination airport, Source, Narrative, ]
27-Oct-2018 19:26	Nepa	Updated [Operator, Operator, ]
23-Aug-2021 10:29	Cobar	Updated [Photo, ]
15-May-2024 21:24	Nepa	Updated [Time, Location, Destination airport, Operator, ]
07-Aug-2025 05:51	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Time, Cn, Operator, Location, Departure airport, Destination airport, Source, Embed code, Narrative, Category, ]