On the 30th of November 1950 the pilot of this Meteor was on a training exercise when he flew too far from the airfield and ran out of fuel. At 4000 feet the pilot said he was going to bale out. He eventually did this but the time he did his aircraft was too low, he was killed when his parachute failed to deploy and he landed in an orchard. The aircraft came down three miles west of Guisborough and disintergrated. It was written off with Cat E2/FA damage. The pilot was on only his second solo flight and had only two hours flying the Meteor.

The aircraft was initially ordered as a Gloster Thunderbolt and was built to contract ACFT/1490 by Gloster at Hucclecote. (At some point the Gloster "Thunderbolt" was renamed the "Meteor"). It was delivered to the RAF in December 1946 and issued to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough where it was presumably used for test purposes. No clear history is known until the aircraft was issued to 205 AFS when the unit formed on 7th September 1950.

Pilot - Sgt Thomas Henry St.John Seabrook RAF (3507650), aged 24. Buried Darlington Western Cemetery.

Thomas Seabrook was born on 15th May 1926 in Meerut, U.P of India.

I have not yet located where exactly the Meteor came down. I am told that the field still has a dead patch in it where the aircraft went in.