Elidir Fawr
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig2
A Wales trip yesterday, we set out with no great hopes of finding any of the three known, and one disputed wreck sites on Elidir Fawr and Elidir Fach. Elidir Fawr has a power station hidden inside it, and is therefore also known as Electric Mountain.
On top of "Electric Mountain", in that cloud somewhere, might well be some remains from the crash of Piper Tomahawk G-BOCC, but we weren't up for the final ascent on the day. The Tomahawk's pilot spent several hours conscious and badly injured hanging over a long, steep drop before he was rescued. Not his best day ever, I shouldn't imagine.
The crash site is allegedly very close to the remains of a Beaufighter according to the Snowdonia scrap dealer's list. They don't call themselves scrap dealers, they think they are aviation archaeologists. However, since most of the stuff they "recovered" quasi-legally from the mountains of Wales ended up weighed in for scrap, it seems the fairest description. Archaeologists do not deal in scrap metal.
We did find wreckage where these Diddycoys said they found Hercules engines from a Beaufighter. We understand however that majority opinion would be that this wreckage is from a Skua which crashed there, or even from the Blenheim crash site (600m away, according to "High Ground Wrecks"). Skuas did not have Bristol Hercules engines. They did however have Bristol Perseus engines. These have 9 cylinders, vs 14 for the Hercules. Could it be that they just couldn't count that high? Of course, if the grave-robbers hadn't weighed the identifiable bits of the the 'plane in, we'd be in a better position to comment on what they saw!
We also found some bits on the slopes of Elidir Fach which were unarguably from Blenheim V6099. It doesn't appear on the previously mentioned list, but it's definitely on the hill.
So we found a fair bit more than expected, and were back down in time for a spot of fish and chips. All good.
Since we posted this we have had some correspondence which suggests that we should not criticise people we have not met.
OK, we take it all back. That guy Hitler was probably just misunderstood too. What do we know, we never met him.
6 comments:
you might get more replies about this site on other forums, the key forum has several similar threads running most of which have had several replies.
nice to be talked about, but we don't frequent the plane anorak forums. We are walkers, not plane nuts.
But I thought you were after identities to some parts, which walkers can't identify, wouldn't these forums be the best place for that?
TIGHAR recommended the aero part identify board. we use that.
I went to Elidir Fach on Monday 1st June to look for the Tomahawk G-BOCC that crashed there. Looking at the AAIB report I had difficulty making sense of the location co-ordinates given, 5306.9N seemed about 1.8Km south of Elidir Fach, 404.5W seemed ok though. So I used the map in fig 1 of the report which gives the GPs plot and Radar derived track of the aircraft to come up with an estimate of SH 61392 61314 and used that.
I looked from that point about 100m west towards the summit and swept round to the north but found nothing at all. I carried on up to the summit keeping an eye out but still nothing. So I had to console myself with the nearby Blenheim and the two Ansons on Mynydd Perfedd. Getting back home and reading the accident report again it seems the Tomahawk struck the ground 85m from the summit on a heading of 250 degrees and carried on towards the summit for 30m.This tallies with the 404.5W co-ordinate in the report. I had started my search about 200m east from the summit, so I was out by over 100m. Even so, I should have noticed any sizeable bits on my final walk to the summit. Again the report said the aircraft was salvaged and took to Farnborough so there may only be small pieces left. I may go back sometime to have another look although I would not want to be up there in bad weather.
William
Thanks William,
your logic seems more or less the same as we were going to follow. We might follow up with the metal detector when we go back for the skua...
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