Photograph via Mr John Aston.
On Friday the 27th of April 1979 a Phantom jet based at the major USAF base at Alconbury was
on a low level tactical reconaissance mission over the north of England. It is thought that the
crew were
taking photographs at low level over the North York Moors. It is not known whether the visibility
was bad when the aircraft took off but at the time of its demise visibility was good, it was a fine day.
The aircraft was flying towards the Lealholm area when the engine stalled for reasons not
known to me.
The pilot boosted the power but flames came out of the rear of the aircraft. The crew must by
now have realised that
they were left with no option but to stay with their stricken aircraft and take it to earth.
The plane was seen to bank
left at a low level. A witness said that he saw the two airmen in their cockpit seconds before
impact during this banking.
At 09.40 hrs, the wing of the Phantom then dug into the ground causing a large rut to be made, the aircraft
would have been travelling far too fast for any control to be made at this stage.
The aircraft cartwheeled some distance before completely disintergrating in a fireball across fields below
Lealholmside.
The nose cone was found in an oddly good condition close to the road up the hill (see pic below - green dot),
The aircraft shot through the stone wall to the left of the road and across this road leaving numerous
scrape marks on it. It then crashed through the ditch at the other side of the road and through another stone wall bordering this ditch.
The fields at this side of the road had hundreds of sheep in them. The resulting fireball which scorched the land also wiped out all these animals.
Two telegraph poles in these fields were also broken down. The engines stopped after a distance across these next fields (blue dots). Grim as it may be, the red dots show where the airmen were found.
The wreckage was scattered the full length of the crash site, which is said to be about half a mile in length. Wreckage travelled across these fields and up the hill into gardens of the houses along the Lealholmside raod.
Wreckage was also found in gardens to the top left of the photo, near where the impact was.
The aircrafts full history is not yet known. It was built by McDonnell Douglas at St.Louis, USA.
The line and dots were drawn on my photo by Mr D Garbutt, who visited the crash the day it happened. The Phantom crashed left to right.
It was widely thought that the crew guided their aircraft away from the village
and into these fields above Lealholm and therefore saving the village and nearby school from
being struck which would have resulted in a much greater loss of life. By looking at the line drawn across the photo it would appear a near miricle that no other buildings were hit in the crash and that the crew knew exactly what they were doing when they directed their aircraft away from the village. The school would have opened less than an hour previously and would have been full.
The crew stood no chance of surviving the crash, they are commemorated by a stone, erected by villagers, near the scene of the crash. The were:
Pilot - Major Donald Lee Schuyler, USAF. Born 1 Feb 1941. Burial location unknown - thought to be in the USA.
Navigator - Lt Thomas Wheeler, USAF. Born 3 May 1953. Burial location unknown - thought to be in the USA.
Major Schuyler and Lt Wheeler USAF.
Memorial to the two USAF crew who died.
The Phantom crashed through these fields and walls.
I visited the crash site in May 2002, though a rainy day, I took these photographs. The plane crashed through fields from the centre to the right of the bottom photograph, just below Lealholmside.
My thanks to Mr D Garbutt and his father for their memories of this crash, without which this page would not be as complete.
Someone stole the canopy from the crash site, it was later found near Scarth Nick, Osmotherley.
