NEPTUNE ON THE MULL OF KINTYRE

NEPTUNE ON THE MULL OF KINTYRE

Arthur Helsby

On Wednesday 10 October 1956 members of the Leuchars MRT had retired to their beds after a routine day’s work on camp. At 2 o’clock in the morning they were awakened by a voice on the tannoy repeating “All members of the MRT report to the Mountain Rescue section immediately”. At first this seemed like a dream until the reality sunk in that this was a genuine callout. As they hastily gathered their kit together and made their way to the section, sleepiness gave way to excitement as the adrenaline started to flow. At the briefing they were told that an RAF Neptune of Coastal Command had crashed on the Mull of Kintyre and they were to make their way immediately to Campbeltown from where the local police would guide them to the crash site. The vehicles, always kept on standby, were packed with personal kit and emergency provisions, and the team were on their way by 2.30am so as to arrive at the site soon after first light.

The night air was cold and those members of the team who were unfortunate enough not to get a seat inside one of the vehicles had to huddle together in the back of the QL in an attempt to keep warm. As the convoy sped its way across Scotland the excitement was replaced by the sombre thought of the gruesome task that lay ahead. No-one in the QL managed to get much sleep that night as the cold slowly penetrated their parkas and fleece-lined flying boots, which were standard issue in those days. The 300-mile route took them through Perth, Crief, Crianlarich, Arrochar, Inveraray, Lochgilphead, Tarbert and finally to Campbeltown, where they were met by the local police at 6 o’clock. They, who had already inspected the crash site, reported that there were no survivors of the crew of nine, and the task ahead was that of recovering the bodies.

After cups of hot tea provided by the wife of the police sergeant, the convoy set off along the narrow winding road which leads to the lighthouse on the Mull of Kintyre. At a point where the track starts to drop steeply down to the lighthouse the convoy came to a halt and a forward base camp was set up. The crash site was a mile to the north of the base camp on the west slope of Beinn na Lice at about 1300 ft. It took the team only 20 minutes to reach the wreckage and what they saw was a scene of sheer devastation and carnage. The only recognisable sections of the plane were the tail unit, the partially burnt-out fuselage and part of the starboard wing. The plane had disintegrated on impact leaving a 300-yard trail of scorched heather and debris, starting with the tail plane and finishing with the starboard engine. Some bodies had been thrown clear, but others were entangled in the fuselage and apart from their physical injuries were badly burnt. There was evidence that at least one member of the crew had survived the initial crash and had crawled several yards before dying. There was an eerie silence about the place and the unmistakable stench of death pervaded the whole atmosphere.

The first task was to extract the bodies from the wreckage and to collect the others ready for evacuation to the road. Not many of the team had experienced this kind of situation before and the fact that they carried out their task in a dignified and professional manner was a great credit to them. Nothing in their training had prepared them for this. The very presence of ‘Doc’ Rennie, who supervised the gruesome task, was of tremendous support and the fact that no one member wanted to let the rest of the team down instilled an inner discipline which saw them through that dreadful day. They quickly had to learn to put their emotions to one side and to detach themselves from the fact that they were handling badly-mutilated bodies. The team only carried one Thomas stretcher so this had to be supplemented by standard canvas and pole stretchers supplied by the police. The bodies were taken down to the road where they were placed on a BRS lorry and covered with a tarpaulin sheet before being transported to Campbeltown police station where the cells acted as a temporary morgue.

Neptune MR1 (WX545) Code ‘C’ from No. 36 Squadron with a crew of nine was detached from its base at RAF Topcliffe to a joint anti-submarine course at HMS Sea Eagle, Londonderry. It was conducting an ASW exercise in the area adjacent to the Mull of Kintyre when it encountered a blanket of thick fog along the coastline. According to one eye witness the plane could be heard circling the lighthouse several times before it crashed in a ball of fire. It appeared to be trying to pin-point its position before beginning its final approach to its temporary base at Ballykelly in Northern Ireland. Other eye-witnesses had reported seeing a flare on the east side of Beinn na Lice, but it wasn’t known if this was from the Neptune or an aircraft from the Royal Naval Air Station at Machrihanish which was sent up to try to locate the crash. Whilst the rest of the team were evacuating the last of the bodies, I was taken by the police sergeant to a remote farm on the east side of Beinn Bhreac from where the flare had been sighted. The purpose was to record the flare’s position and to recover it for identification by the crash investigation team. It was felt that this could help to determine the flight path of the Neptune, but it turned out that it had been dropped from the Naval aircraft. It didn’t take long before the burnt-out flare and its parachute were found and taken down to the police station in Campbeltown.

By now it was late in the day and the team having completed their task were taken to the Royal Naval Air Station at Machrihanish, where they were provided with a hot meal and accommodation for the night. In the meantime I had arrived at the police station where Doc Rennie was carrying out a preliminary examination of the bodies so that they could be formally pronounced dead. This task completed, both Doc and I were taken to Machrihanish where we joined the rest of the team. We found our colleagues tired and in a sombre mood; it had been 20 hours since they had left Leuchars and nearly 48 hours since they had had a good night’s sleep. The following day, Friday, the team headed back to Leuchars, arriving at mid-day when they were finally stood down 33 hours after they had been called out. It took the team some time to come to terms with what they had witnessed. Some members chose to talk freely about their feelings, whilst others kept their emotions to themselves. For some it had been a very distressing experience and they were left to overcome their emotions in their own individual way.

For some time the coastline of Kintyre, and in particular the area around the Mull, has been known to pilots as a dangerous area to fly at low level because of the freak weather conditions that frequently affect the coastline. The first recorded military air accident on the Mull was in 1941 when an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley from No. 502 Sqn crashed on the west slope of Beinn na Lice, no more than one tenth of a kilometre from the site of the Neptune crash. Since then there have been nineteen recorded air accidents in the vicinity of the Mull and over a hundred and twenty lives have been lost in this remote corner of Scotland, making it one of the most notorious areas in the whole of the UK for air accidents.

By far the most tragic of these accidents, in terms of lives lost, was on 2 June 1994 when an RAF HC2 (ZD567) Code G from No. 7 Squadron crashed. The helicopter was on a flight from Aldergrove to Inverness with a party of senior intelligence and security officers and was heading towards the Mull of Kintyre when it encountered low cloud. As it approached the land it too crashed on the slopes of Beinn na Lice, less than a kilometre from the site of the Neptune crash, killing all 29 on board. Once again Leuchars MRT were called out to attend the crash and probably encountered the same scene of devastation that their ex-colleagues had 38 years earlier.

It is interesting to make certain comparisons between the two events and in particular the psychological effect it must have had on the two teams. As was the case in the Neptune crash, it was likely that the majority of the 1994 team hadn’t witnessed the sight of badly-mutilated bodies before and they would have had to overcome their inner feelings in order to get on with the job in hand. However, unlike the 1956 team, they were offered counselling for post traumatic stress disorder. In 1956 the condition hadn’t been recognised.

The Neptune crash was reported on the front pages of all the national newspapers and was top news of the day. The day after, the world moved on and Whisky X-Ray and its crew were consigned to history. As far as the general public were concerned the tragic deaths of the nine crew members were soon forgotten.

Compare this with the wide media coverage given to the Chinook crash and the ongoing controversy regarding the conclusions of the Board of Enquiry and the subsequent ruling of the House of Lords. Could this be because of the high profile of those who were killed, or is it symptomatic of today’s open society which encourages us to question the decisions of those in authority?

Furthermore, soon after the Chinook crash a memorial to those killed was erected at the crash site in honour of those who were killed. However, it wasn’t until 9 July 1998 that a memorial was consecrated in memory of the Neptune crew. Why did it take so long? After all, death is the supreme leveller and the same recognition should be given to all those who are killed in the service of their country. Could it be that the Chinook crash was a reminder of all those other airmen who have lost their lives in this remote corner of Scotland, or an example of how people’s emotional attitudes towards death and disaster have changed over the past forty years?

Whatever the reason, one thing is sure: those poor victims of the Neptune crash will never be forgotten by those members of the Leuchars MRT who were called out on that autumn day in 1956.

Arthur Helsby adds:

The freak meteorological conditions that appear to have confronted both pilots are described in the following extract from a letter written to the editor of The Daily Telegraph (13 December 2000) by Sqn Ldr Donald Kinch:

“In light winds and high relative humidity, layers of fog and low cloud form adjacent to the Mull to obscure the high ground completely. There are occasions when a relatively calm sea and a grey sky of similar hue merge, so that in otherwise good visibility a pilot flying in accordance with Visual Flight Rules may be unaware that he is about to enter a fog/cloud bank.”

At the time of the Neptune crash Sqn Ldr Kinch was QFI at the Sunderland FBTS based at Pembroke Dock. For him and his wife the accident was a personal tragedy. His sister-in-law, who coincidentally was staying with them at the time of the accident, was married to one of the Neptune’s signallers, Sgt Eric Honey. Having just been posted to RAF Kinloss, the squadron leader and his wife were able to take Mrs Honey back to Topcliffe en route to Scotland. The squadron leader, who has flown many hours at low level in the area of the Mull, testifies in his letter to the danger caused by the freak meteorological phenomenon that frequently occurs in the region. He also numbers as his friends many of the aircrew that died in the two subsequent Shackleton accidents there.

The Neptune crash was the first major callout for the team since it moved to Leuchars [from Edzell] and represented one of the greatest losses of life in a single peace-time RAF air accident in the UK; only the crash of a Washington, and of a Shackleton MR2 off the Mull of Kintyre in 1953, had been greater. The Lancaster crash on Beinn Eighe in 1951 which claimed eight lives is considered to be a significant turning-point in the development of the RAF Mountain Rescue Service. However, for the Leuchars team the Neptune crash represented a coming of age when the team were required to perform the task for which they were trained. More information on Beinn Eighe and its effects can be read in Frank Card’s Whensoever - 50 Years of the RAF Mountain Rescue Service 1943-1993.