# What happens when a plane hits a mountain, French/Spanish border



## hnmisty (Mar 15, 2010)

Ok, its not a derlict place but it is fascinating stuff, I think.

Did this in Summer 2006, I expect not much has changed given its been like this for 60 years.

The man who runs the campsite where we have stayed in for several years on holiday in the summer told us about this one. He only told us as he'd got to know us over the years, its one of his well-kept secrets. He is well into his 70s and used to visit this place quite often when he was younger. It must have taken him days to get there and back each time.

Its a tragic story, the plane was heading for home in a convoy, it was the last in the group. Something must have been faulty with the plane's altimeter as it hit the lip of a crater and flung in.
The date?
April 1945.
This place is literally nowhere, its several hours by foot from the nearest village, and that had been cleared out by the Germans. The nearest village from there is 11 miles by road (of hairpin after hairpin after hairpin) and there was no road in the 40s, only a donkey path.

The wreck was found when the shepards came up in the Spring with their sheep. One found a human foot. Then they looked over the edge of the crater and saw the whole plane down there. The first thing they did was to take the bodies back to the village further away, where they buried them in their graveyard. They notified the War Graves Commission, who took the bodies for burial in the war cemetary in Marsailles. 

The Spanish came up and stripped the plane, they took everything they could carry, even sheared off all the aluminium piping. 

My mum managed to trace all the airmen. I think they were mainly an Australian crew with a couple of Canadians. They were flying in a Short Sterling, so were a crew of seven.

It took us two attempts on two different days to find this place, you have to scramble down the side of the crater so we had to spot it with binoculars...and there's not much left.
As we scrambled down the side we kept finding bits of perspex.

Here are the pics;

















































Its such a peaceful place, it felt odd even talking normally. 
This is taken on the way up on attempt no 1 (that's me in the middle )





The way up was via the remains of a look-out post. It was burnt to the ground in the 80s (there aren't bitter, bitter feelings in this area at all...)

The campsite man's father used to help escaped Allied POWs over the border into Spain, including this chappie [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_McGeoch[/ame]. He wrote this book "An Affair of Chances: a Submariner's Odyssey, 1939-44", and his father is mentioned.The campsite man said in winter his father used to take the escapee up to the border, both with skis. He would then turn and head home whilst the escapee would ski off in the opposite direction.


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## the_historian (Mar 15, 2010)

Great pics, thanks for posting. 
Here's a site for UK wrecks for anyone interested. Going to try and get to some of these myself this summer.
http://members.multimania.co.uk/daveswrecks/


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## hnmisty (Mar 15, 2010)

Thanks for the website, I can tell I'm going to spend far too much time on there! None near me at home but plenty around Leedsih, will have to try to get out to some.
It reminded me of one near me, no wreckage left as it was only a glider and not in a completely rural area but there is a memorial service each year
http://airbornesappers.org.uk/ShortTermContent/DoubleHills2009.html

thanks, my mum took them!


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## the_historian (Mar 15, 2010)

No worries. Nice to see those airborne boys being remembered.


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## Foxylady (Mar 15, 2010)

Just seeing those few scraps of remains makes it feel far sadder, for some reason...the fact that there's only a bit left to remember them by, if that makes sense. That's such a good story about the campsite man's father too.
Cheers for posting that up. You have a cool family!


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## lomax (Apr 3, 2010)

*Air plane crashes.*

Hi,
Great pics, about 2 years ago my father took me up on Kinder scout in Derbyshire looking for aircraft wrecks
which have loads of them up there, we came across about 10 of them, but have no pics. there is a website on the aircraft wrecks. http://www.astrecks.co.uk/peakaircraftwrecks.htm


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