Meteor near Cayton Carr Farm, Cayton, Scarborough.
On the 15th of June 1955 the pilot of this aircraft took off from Driffield at 10.46hrs for his first solo flight
to undertake a high speed training flight.
This was to have been carried out at speeds upto
Mach 0.78 at 35,000ft. The pilot was also to practice making steep turns at high altitude, high speed descending to 20,000ft
and making a high level controlled descent. The weather was good; an excellent summers day. Just before 11.00hrs the aircraft was seen
descending at a rough angle of 20' at very high speed on an easterly heading. This angle did not change and many witnesses heard the
aircrafts engines
screaming as it approached Seamer and Cayton. The aircraft struck the ground with its starboard wing slightly dropped, bounced back into the air
and exploded. The pilot would have stood no chance and would have been killed in the impact at 11.05hrs. As the aircraft disintergrated parts of it
brought down telephone lines and damaged overhead power lines. The crash investigation considered that
the cause for the crash could have been due to anoxia on the pilot but this was not in "the usual way". One possibilty that may have resulted in the
pilot blacking out was that he had flown with his straps fairly loose and being a taller than average pilot his seat was unusally high in its setting. During a
high speed turn at altitude the pilot may have struck his head on the aircraft which rendered him unconscious.
The aircraft was manufactured on 22nd September 1948. The aircraft had a total of 553hrs flown at the time of the crash and had last been serviced 134hrs prior to the crash
Pilot - P/O Jorn Dietmar Walz RAF (2713560), aged 20, of Heidelberg, Germany. Buried Driffield Cemetery, Yorkshire (grave 3952). He was born on 14th Jan 1935.
P/O Jorn Walz's gravestone in Driffield Cemetery.
I visited the field where the aircraft first made impact in July 2008 with fellow researchers Ken Reast, Albert Pritchard and Eric Barton after
gaining permission from the landowner of Cayton Carr Farm. Photographs obtained from the crash investigation report held in the National Archives
made it possible to pinpoint the exact point of impact (shown in the photograph above) and although few fragments were found in this area there is no doubt that this was location.
Upon striking the ground, which is very hard in this field, the aircraft bounced back into the air for afew feet prior to exploding in the air. A
scatter of wreckage was located below where this must have occured and two peices of interest are shown below. After the explosion the momentum of the
aircraft carried the wreckage over a farm road and across a number of fields with engine parts travelling over 1,000 yds. The area where this occured
had standing barley in it so a search of these fields was not possible but we hope to make a return visit in the near future after harvest-time.
The fields over which much of the wreckage was scattered.
The only peice with a Gloster part number we found on our visit to the site.
A currently unidentified peice.
Ken, Albert, Eric and myself express our thanks to Ms. Richardson of Cayton Carr Farm, Cayton for allowing us to visit the crash site and for the
help her employees were able to give us.