RAF Vickers Wellington, Bynack More, crash date 15/08/44


[Picture from wikipedia.org]

OS 10-figure grid refs (GPS):

NJ 04826 09497
NJ 04890 09585
NJ 04918 09560
NJ 04957 09629
NJ 04993 09701

Google Maps display showing wreckage locations

Little is known about this site and it does not appear in the usually authoritative HGWR. According to a posting on a discussion forum here, this site was not discovered until 2004, which is quite remarkable and shows that there may well be crash sites in the Scottish mountains yet to be discovered.

Upon visiting the site it does become apparent why it has remained unknown for so long. It lies on a featureless flat moorland at an altitude of about 740m, about 3km north of the summit of Bynack More, near the minor summit of An Lurg, and is the kind of place walkers avoid (although it is not far from the main walking route to the summit of Bynack More). It is a maze of marshy bogs and peat hags that make for difficult walking and which hides a lot of the remaining wreckage from view.

There is one main debris site with a substantial amount of wreckage and several further bits of wreckage lie scattered in a trail from this site for about 200m in a north-easterly direction. This debris site sits in a shallow depression which may have been caused by a large section of the Wellington bomber impacting the ground (photos 1 to 5). All of the remaining wreckage is highly fragmented and mangled and this seems to point to a high-speed and violent crash.

Identification of the type of plane involved is easy as many pieces of the geodetic airframe of the Wellington are clearly visible in the wreckage. Only one engine remains at the site, and other recognisable pieces are of the landing gear and oxygen bottles. Owing to the nature of the site, there may well be other pieces of wreckage still to be discovered (e.g. the other engine).

There are some photographs of the site and information about the crash on the TFDACSS website here. The WYACU website has some pictures of the site and information about the crash here.

These pictures were taken in July 2009.