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THE thought that a group of young school friends setting off from home on a summer day to play cowboys near their home might be hit by a Royal Air Force jet crashing from the sky sounds like every parent’s nightmare.
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| NEAR MISS: A Hawker Hunter of the type that crashed |
Such a tragedy nearly happened 45 years ago within a mile of the Ipswich town centre.
A Hawker Hunter jet from RAF Wattisham crashed into open land in Tuddenham Avenue, during the morning of August 2, 1957.
John Cook, of Framlingham, who has friends in Tuddenham Avenue, Ipswich, contacted me in the hope of finding more information of the incident.
A little bit of digging in the Star library told the tale of remarkable escape for all involved.
Children playing near the crash were unhurt, although debris damaged surrounding houses.
The burning aircraft made a crater in a building site, which was the only area not built up – apart from the nearby cemetery.
The pilot had baled out and landed safely at Belstead. He telephoned Wattisham and was picked up by helicopter.
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| A CUTTING from The Evening Star shows the crater (foreground) made by the crashed aircraft. The damaged houses in Tuddenham Avenue are in the background. |
The crater, where the main part of the aircraft landed, was a site being developed by Ipswich company LD Bloom. The aircraft burst into flames 20 yards from where the children were playing in a Second World War air raid shelter.
“We were playing cowboys,” eight-year-old Keith Donovan, of Hayhill Road told the Star at the time. “There was great big bang and the flames came up. We laid down and then ran over to see where it had crashed”.
Robert Grumberg, nine, of Cemetery Road; John Gunusko, nine, of Cemetery Road, Billy Simpson, of Hayhill Road, and Tommy Lait, 12, of Suffolk Road, were playing with Keith when the aircraft smashed into the ground nearby. All escaped injury.
The blast blew rubble away from them on to a block of new houses.
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| CHILDREN who had been playing near the crash site watch with police and residents |
Billy’s sister, Susan 11, who was playing nearby, saw the jet turning round and round. “I saw clouds of smoke and flames. When it came down it sizzled and then there was a terrific bang. My sister threw herself on to the ground.”
Mr G Stapleton, of Tuddenham Avenue, who was one of the first to arrive at the scene said: “There was nothing to be seen, only burning fuel, a few pieces of plane and an enormous crater.”
His wife added: “It was a terrific crash. Everything came off the mantelpiece in my sitting room, but nothing was broken.”
One of the houses which suffered the most damage was that of Mr and Mrs Ron Abbott of Tuddenham Avenue. When he arrived home, Ron found dirt all the way up the stairs. In his front bedroom there was a large hole in the roof.
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| A VIEW across the rooftops shows
how densely populated the area of Ipswich was where the aircraft crashed |
“We only came into the house six weeks ago when we returned from honeymoon. Everything was new,” said his wife.
The aircraft landed only a few hundred yards from an area of Ipswich badly damaged by a parachute mine in the Second World War.
A bomb disposal team detonated the mine after it partly exploded when dropped from a German bomber on September, 21, 1940. In the first explosion one house was wrecked and 25 damaged. A further 150 houses suffered blast damage.
When the mine was detonated on September 23, a crater 25ft deep resulted, 70 houses were destroyed and hundreds damaged.