This was a really special adventure. It was beautiful, challenging, magical in the snow, an achievement but also very sad too. It was a day of really mixed emotions.
There are not many winter days like this in Yorkshire when you have thick snow on the peaks but glorious blue sky and sunshine at the same time, but last Saturday was one of those very rare days.
You will have worked out by now that I love hiking, I love mountains and I love snow (when I’ve not got to drive to work in it). I live on the very edge of the northern Peak District which straddles the counties of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire. The Peak District is a huge expanse split into the Dark Peak in the North where I am based, which gets its name from its geological formation from dark coloured gritstone, and the White Peak a little further South named because of its paler coloured limestone geology.
Just 20 minutes from me in the Dark Peak is the very bleak, isolated moorland, aptly called Bleaklow. It is over 2000 feet above sea level and is a huge plateau of peat covered gritstone. It lacks any changes in elevation. It is completely flat and has huge channels in the peat which you walk along. It’s a bit like a huge flat maze once you get up on the top of the moor and into the channels. In poor conditions, off the path, it is the most difficult traverse in the Peak District as the cloud just hugs the top and because it is so vast and flat it’s just so difficult to get a navigational bearing because there is just nothing there.
In addition to being a really difficult area to traverse it also holds much bigger secrets and that’s what I went in search of today. It is known as the UK’s biggest aircraft graveyard. There have been no less than 173 aircraft accidents in the Peak District, a large number on Bleaklow. At 1437 km² that’s almost one every 8km² compared to only 128 in the whole of Scotland which is 77,910 km².
What makes it even sadder and more eerie is the fact that due to the lie of the land, although the bodies were eventually recovered, the aircraft wreckage still remains in a lot of cases, as it would just be too difficult to reclaim it from such a bleak, isolated destination.
Now this is a story of ‘third time lucky’. I’ve been up here before on two previous occasions and never made it to the wreckage sites. I’ve lost my nerve both times when the cloud came in and I’ve turned back. All you have to help you find the wreckage is an Ordinance Survey Map grid reference. They are not on a footpath, there are no large signs, no directional arrows, just nothing for miles. It’s a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack and you completely lose your signal on any electronic devices up there so they are of no use at all to assist.
I’m not sure why exactly I have always wanted to get to the wrecks. I guess I just like to learn the history of things and try and understand. I know it’s going to make me sad, just like all those other war related sites I’ve visited, but I just have to go in search of them, pay my respects and understand.
There are three major aircraft wreck sites in a radius of a couple of miles and I wanted to try and find all three. I parked up in the small town of Old Glossop to climb the very steep hill which leads to the top of Shelf Moor and Bleaklow. It put my new coat to the test because although there wasn’t much snow at the bottom, as I climbed higher and higher it just got thicker and thicker and it was freezing cold. I was well layered though in my ski thermals and a number of other layers. I managed to stay snug as a bug in a rug and pressed on. I’d remembered my poles fortunately but it still felt like one step forwards and two backwards in the snow. You could tell in places, no-one else had passed that way for days, since it snowed earlier in the week, as sometimes there were no fresh tracks in the snow, just those of the mountain hare who looked to have been the only living thing up there.
Once up onto the jutting out section of hillside known as James Thorn it was time to look for wreck number one. It took ages to find it but eventually the single stone monument could be seen sticking out of the ground. This is one of the smaller wreckage sites and not the big one I had mainly come to find, but its sad story made me want to seek it out nonetheless. This is the wreckage of Lancaster Bomber KB993. It took off from Linton on Ouse near York on the 18th May 1945 with 6 men on board. It was a Canadian Airforce plane and had a Canadian goose emblazoned on the side and the words ‘For Freedom’. Ironically the war in Europe had ended just 10 days before this tragic event and preparations were being made back in Canada for the welcoming home of the squadron on 20th May 1945. Unfortunately, these 6 men never made it home. They were just on a routine exercise practicing take-offs and landings. It is thought that they got a bit bored and decided to take a circular tour over the Peak District. Darkness fell and with no navigator on board to warn them of the height of the hillside, the plane struck the side of James Thorn at around 10pm that night, bursting into a ball of flame. Although the rear gunner lived for a short while after impact all 6 perished. Parts of the wreckage still remain along with a plaque bearing the names of the crew and a dedication to them. It really is sad when you are stood amongst it all.
Once you have found the first wreck the second is quite easy to find. It is only 200 yards from the first so once you have taken a bearing you are straight to it. This is the wreckage of a C47 Skytrain (Dakota) US Airforce plane which crashed just a few months later on 24th July 1945. There were a crew of 5 and 2 USAF passengers on board. It was flying from Leicester to Scotland on a routine supply trip. The first Lieutenant had been given an alternative flight path up the east coast and had been warned of bad weather over the Peak District. However, with a navigator on board they decided to take the more direct route over the high ground of the Peak District. They never made it to their destination and the wreckage was discovered two days later by two walkers. They thought they had discovered an old crash site, the Lancaster KB993 of a few months earlier, until they spotted someone they thought was asleep on the grass. It was only when they scrambled over the rest of the wreckage that they found the other passengers and crew, all dead, and realised it was a new crash site.
It was all really quite sad and by this time I needed a moment and was not sure I wanted to find the third site. It got to me more than I thought it would, they were so young. I’d taken my picnic and a flask of peppermint tea so after walking another mile or so onto the top of High Shelf Stones I clambered onto a rock to eat my lunch. It was actually very beautiful, and were it not for the fact that my trousers froze to the rock I could have stayed up there all day.
After lunch it only took me around 10 minutes to reach the site of the wreckage of what I’d really gone to find, the Superfortress 29 ‘Over Exposed’. It was every bit as moving as I thought it would be even though I felt a sense of achievement at having made it up there and finding it in the first place. This area is Woodhead and Edale Mountain Rescue Team’s worst nightmare. Someone in their infinite wisdom last summer put it on TikTok. Subsequently hundreds and hundreds of people completely unprepared (think flip flops, no waterproofs, no map and compass) thought it would be a good day trip. What followed were a few weeks of rescues and public appeals from Mountain Rescue not to go looking for the wrecks unless you could read a map and were fully equipped. So, if you are reading this and thinking it would be a good day out, it is, but just make sure you go prepared to get lost and be up there a while i.e., a good bit of food and drink, map, compass and some warm layers just in case.
This was a huge plane, enormous. It was another US Airforce plane and had previously been engaged in the Pacific as part of the Atomic Bomb unit which took part in the tests on Bikini Atoll in 1946. By the time it crashed on 3rd November 1948 it had been re-kitted as a photo reconnaissance plane. It was only flying a routine flight of what should have been 25 minutes from Scampton in Lincolnshire to Burtonwood USAF base in Warrington with a crew of 13 men. They were told they would experience broken cloud between 2000 and 4000 feet. It is assumed they tried to descended to below 2000 feet to get below the cloud but went crashing straight into the ground which at the summit of Bleaklow is 2077ft above sea level. When the plane failed to arrive as scheduled, an air search was commenced and the blazing wreckage was spotted high on the moor. A mountain rescue team was quickly despatched but it was clear when they arrived there was nothing they could do to save any of the 13 crew. The wreckage and bodies covered a wide area and although the following day the bodies were all found and stretchered off the moor, the wreckage remains. It’s not until you start wandering amongst the heather that you realise just how big the aircraft was. There is just so much wreckage: wheels; engines; undercarriage; side panels. I thought the first two sites were sad but this one is devastating. I think it’s just the sheer size of it. And this one is much higher up, the snow is much deeper, the terrain more challenging and to put it quite bluntly is just such a godforsaken place to die. It’s a well visited site though and they will never be forgotten. There is always a remembrance service up here for anyone daring to brave it in November, with the flying of the American flag, and people will often come up here to plant crosses and just to remember the service of all of the service men who have lost their lives up here in pursuit of our freedom. 122 of the 173 aircraft lost in the Peak District were military aircraft.
All in all it was an epic adventure, but one of very mixed emotions. It was very sad, but it was a beautiful day to visit and I was so glad I made it this time around. All that was left was to do the 5 mile return journey all the way back in the snow down to Old Glossop. I’ve decided 5 miles uphill is easier than 5 miles downhill in snow……..a sledge would have been better for the return. I got down just before dark and was so ready for my usual end of adventure refreshment. Now this being an epic adventure and feeling we needed a little toast to adventuring, a drink to drown sorrows and a dedication to those brave airmen I had no problem swapping my usual flat white coffee for a Raspberry Mojito! Well, come to think of it I have no problem swapping my coffee for a cocktail on any day of the week. Caught in the act again!
