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Page3. Click the Photos for a bigger image.  Superfortress B 29It was only a twenty five minute trip for a B-29 from Scampton in Lincolnshire to Burtonwood USAF base near Warrington, when the pilot Captain Landon P. Tanner took off on the morning of 3rd November 1948, at around 10.15. His crew for the trip consisting of co-pilot, Captain Harry Stroud; engineer, Technical Sergeant Ralph Fields; navigator, Sergeant Charles  Wilbanks; radio operator, Staff Sergeant Gene A. Gartner; radar operator, David D. Moore; camera crew, Technical Segeant Saul R. Banks, Sergeant Donald R. Abrogast, Sergeant Robert I. Doyle and Private First Class William M. Burrows. Two other crew members were Corporal M. Franssen and Corporal George Ingram. Acting as photographic advisor was Captain Howard Keel of the 4201st. When Over Exposed failed to arrive at Burtonwood an air search was initiated and during that early wintery afternoon blazing wreckage was spotted high on the moors near Higher Shelf Stones. By chance members of the Harpur Hill RAF Mountain Rescue Unit were just finishing an exercise two and a half miles away, so they quickly made their way to the scene of the crash. Several bodies lay scattered around the blazing twisted metal, it was obvious that there was nothing that they could do for them. How to get the bodies off the moor was the next problem that they had to face. Because of the rough terrain it was suggested that rather than carry the stretchers three miles across the moors to the Snake Pass Road, they would call in helicopters. However, the rescue men volunteered to attempt the job themselves. Six men to a stretcher they set off down the moorland with others taking turns to carry the grim loads. The bodies were taken on to Burtonwood Air Force Base, which at that period served as a servicing depot for American aircraft engaged in the Berlin airlift, the crew of 13 men had all perished. From the wreck site cross the moor to the Hern Stones which are a solitary group of rocks rising prominently from the peat haggs North of the site. At the stones turn South East down the stream bed, and within 200 yards you will be on the Pennine Way which you follow south and then south westerly to the junction with the Doctor's gate path. Your route now descends this impressive valley and follows the line of a Roman road along Doctor's gate, to arrive back at your starting point in Old Glossop.
Mick Melvin |