ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 209804
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| Date: | Thursday 19 October 1939 |
| Time: | 21:50 LT |
| Type: |  Avro Anson Mk I |
| Owner/operator: | ANS RAF |
| Registration: | N5055 |
| MSN: | |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 4 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | Sea off Summerleaze Beach, Bude Bay, Bude, Cornwall -
 United Kingdom
|
| Phase: | En route |
| Nature: | Training |
| Departure airport: | RAF St. Athan, Glamorgan, South Wales |
| RAF Cleave, Bude, Cormwall | |
| Confidence Rating: |  Information is only available from news, social media or unofficial sources |
Avro Anson Mk.I N5055, School of Air Navigation RAF: Written off (destroyed) 19/10/39 when ditched into the sea, Bude Bay, off Bude, Cornwall. Engine cut on night navex; lost height and landed in the sea in attempted forced landing on Summerleaze Beach at Bude. Aircraft sank in shallow water; all of the four crew escaped safely, but the pilot was killed (drowned).
Pilot Officer Joseph Wendell Boreham (New Zealander, aged 24) killed (death by drowning)
Pilot Officer Harry James Winch injured
Sgt Peter Chris Cunningham rescued
AC.1 Clifford Douglas Bradbury rescued
According to a recent newspaper article ("Bude Today" 7 October 2015 - see link #6)
"We believe that Joseph Wendell was an experienced pilot, who was re-teaching an old pilot navigation skills when one of the engines on the plane packed in — you can’t fly an Anson on one engine alone, unlike planes like bombers, so they lost altitude.
“Unfortunately it was too low to land at the former RAF Cleave, about two miles north of Bude, so he decided to follow the coast as they do when it’s bad weather, because it was quite a stormy night apparently. On seeing the beach at Summerleaze, he mistook the surf line for the sand, therefore the plane basically just landed in the sea.
Four crewmen survived the landing, they all survived; they went to a dinghy. On getting in it, they noticed they didn’t have a paddle, so Joseph volunteered to go back to get the paddle or some other implement to steer the guys back to the safety of the beach. Unfortunately, when he returned to the plane which hadn’t quite sunk yet, he retrieved the paddle, but as he was coming out, a wave took him and he was never seen again.”
The incident happened just a month into the war in October 1939, making him the first New Zealand RAF member to be killed in World War Two. The other three crew members survived that day, but two went on to be casualties of war, with just one surviving.
The plane itself was discovered in 1991 while sewage works were being carried out in Bude. Local fishermen helped recover the aircraft and it is from there that the engine ended up in the RAF Memorial Museum at Davidstow."
Sources:
1. Royal Air Force Aircraft L1000-N9999 (James J Halley, Air Britain, 1993 page 159)
2. http://www.rcawsey.co.uk/Acc1939a.htm
3. https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/1530114/boreham,-joseph-wendell/
4. http://www.rafcommands.com/forum/showthread.php?17399-19-10-1939-Avro-Anson-I-N5055-from-the-School-of-Air-Navigation-ditched-in-the-sea
5. http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?a=0&hob_id=1329406&type=&class1=None&period=None&county=None&parish=None&district=None&place=Bude&rational=a&rtype=&rnumber=&recordsperpage=10&nor=186&p=6&recfc=0&move=n&source=text&sort=2#
6. http://www.bude-today.co.uk/article.cfm?id=968&headline=Ensuring%20the%20memory%20of%20wartime%20NZ%20pilot%20will%20live%20on§ionIs=news&searchyear=2015
7. http://www.hrmtech.com/sig/losses.asp
8. http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/record/C20905
9. https://www.nzwargraves.org.nz/casualties/joseph-wendell-boreham
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 24-Apr-2018 17:20 | Dr. John Smith | Added |
| 29-Nov-2018 08:53 | Nepa | Updated [Operator, Nature, Source, Operator] |
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