Spitfire MkVb (photo Mr Richard Seaman).

Spitfire BL251 was built to contract B981687/39 by Vickers Armstrongs Ltd at Castle Bromwich. It was delivered to the RAF on the 23rd November 1941 and assigned to 122 Squadron, 13 Group, Fighter Command, afew days later on the 5th of December 1941 the pilot of this aircraft took off from RAF Scorton for what was thought to have been a training flight, the flight would have taken him close to the North Yorkshire Moors. Whilst on this flight the pilot entered cloud and he lost control, before this could be regained the aircraft struck the ground on the hillside behind Mill Farm, Upsall Moor, on the Eston Hills. The pilot was sadly killed in the crash. Whilst researching this incident it has become clear that the AM 1180 Crash Card was missing from the RAF records, further research into the reasons for the crash is therefore proving harder than normal. One reason for AM1180's being missing is that the aircraft crashed as a result of enemy action, this is not thought to be the case with this specific incident, it is genuinely lost/misfiled (or one of a number of Spitfire Vb Am1180s which were stolen from RAF records some years ago).

Pilot - Sgt Gordon W (Peter) Hutton RAAF, aged 24, of Bulli, New South Wales, Australia. Buried Catterick Cemetery, Yorkshire.

The pilot, Sgt Hutton RAAF and his gravestone at Catterick Cemetery. He was born on the 3rd January 1917 at Liverpool, New South Wales, and enlisted in Sydney on 11 November 1940.

I am told the aircraft crashed on the hillside towards the centre of the photographs. Small peices of the aircraft were found at the site in the early 1990's in a cultivated field. I have not visited the site myself as yet.