AIR ACCIDENT
Valletta VW156 of 78 Sqdn
FAYID 2nd MAY 1951
On the 2nd May 1951, Valetta VW156 of 78 Sqdn was engaged on a demonstration of supply-dropping when one of its supply parachutes and its load became entangled with the tail-plane and fouled the elevators. The parachute then deployed, the crew could not retain control and the aircraft crashed about two miles north-west of RAF Fayid. The roller-conveyor method of dispatch was a major factor in the incident and rarely used again.
There were 8 casualties, 4 RAF crew and 4 Army RASC.
Pilot Officer Basil George Ashton BEM
Corporal Frederick L.H. Bruton
Flight Lieutenant Raymond Douglas Yandell
Corporal John R. Nicholls
Sergeant John Mountjoy Beard
Driver Charles J. Battrick
Sergeant Ian Brackenbridge Ross
Driver Nicholas G.T. Hall
FAYID WAR CEMETERY
I visited the cemetery in October 1951 to see the grave of my cousin, Sergeant Ian Ross, RAF. The photographs from my visit show the temporary graves four years earlier.
Sergeant Ross had died a year or two earlier when a Valetta in which he was the navigator was giving a supply-dropping demonstration at Fayid, using for the first time in a Valetta, a system of rollers for pushing out the load. Apparently something went wrong and one of the parachutes attached itself to the rail and the Valetta crashed. I believe that all of the RAF crew and the RASC dispatchers were killed.
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- Martin Middlebrook, 2/Lt, 84 Coy RASC El Kirsh & ‘O’ Force, Aquaba