THE BERWYN VAMPIRE

In January, 1957, the Austrian Air Force became the final customer for the T55 De Havilland Vampire trainer, three were delivered on March 26th, the first being serial SC-YA. These, and other Vampires, regularly returned to De Havilland's at Broughton, near Chester, for overhaul and servicing.

Following a wheels-up landing in Austria, 5C-YA took off from Broughton for a test flight following major servicing at 1136 on April 18th. 1966.The pilot was Alan Brandon, with Tony Chalk as flight test observer. After takeoff, nothing was heard from the aircraft. After an hour and ten minutes, when fuel would have run out, overdue action was initiated.

The cockpit canopy was found at about 1830 by a farmer near Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceirog, six miles south-west of Llangollen in north-east Wales. A rescue helicopter sent to search for the Vampire was forced to land in a nearby field opposite the "West Arms" public house due to heavy fog, where it stayed overnight.

Local people had reported hearing a bang, followed by a dull "crump' in the area. Due to a heavy snowstorm at the time, the search was abandoned until the following morning, when the Vampire was found by the mountain rescue team from RAF Stafford. It had crashed on the summit of Mynydd Tarw, a 1850-feet mountain in the Berwyn’s.

The body of Tony Chalk was found in the wreckage. He had made no attempt to eject. Mr. Brandon had ejected and was found about two hundred yards from the Vampire. Witnesses said that he appeared to have survived the ejection and impact in the deep snow, but due to broken legs and other injuries, could not reach shelter or safety.

Duncan Stuart has kindly contacted us with additional details:-

I was a HS Chester employee at the time of the Vampire crash which killed Alan Brandon and Tony Chalk, and I went with another HS man (Brian Naylor) to join the Mountain Rescue team. We were the first to discover the wreckage after an exhausting line search up the mountain in thick fog(10-15ft visibility) and thick snow, We found the remains of the observer and I had the sad task of initial identification which was the torn ID card in his shirt pocket inscribed "A.P Challk - flight test engineer"
Alan was lying on his side in the thick snow, on the far side of the hill on the downward slope.

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Control of the aircraft had been lost about thirteen minutes after take-off. The Accident Investigation Branch concluded that the crash had been due to failure of the generator drive, leading to a total loss of the electrical system. The pitot head heater would have then failed, giving incorrect airspeed readings in addition to irregular and spurious information to other instruments. Had the Vampire carried on for about three hundred yards, it would have flown into the valley below, perhaps giving the observer time to eject.

During a visit to the site in 1999, a local gamekeeper pointed out the impact point. The aircraft had crashed near a rocky outcrop, leaving a small depression in the ground. The recovery team had clearly done a good job in collecting evidence for the investigation.

Joe Collier's note when preparing Rob's article for publication in the Aviation Archaeologist Magazine
Writing this report was a touching experience for me, as during my apprenticeship with De Havilland's during the 1950's, I knew Alan Brandon and Tony Chalk and frequently assisted them in their preparations for test flights and on their return. They were highly professional gentlemen, well respected by all who knew them. After leaving De Havilland's in 1961, I eventually went to a teacher training college, where I met a fellow-student who had been member of the RAF Stafford Mountain Rescue team involved with this tragedy. Coincidence can be very sad. ~ Joe.

I actually remember looking out of the design office window on that fateful day and seeing the Vampire head off on it's last flight into the overcast. Something made me think, " Alan, what are you doing flying on a day like this " maybe it was a sense of foreboding that made me keep looking for his return - then my cousin Gerald Palmer who worked with Tony Chalk came into the office, and from his look I just knew something was wrong, his first words were " Alan and Tony are overdue in a Vampire - and they will have run out of fuel about ten minutes ago " the rest is history. I had been taken for a number of flights in the Vampire with Alan, and without fail he would always say "well, would you like to fly the old aeroplane ?" as if he needed to ask ! Thank heavens this was not one of those times. Anyway God bless you Alan and Tony, I'm sure you're both flying high in sunlit skies with all the other absent friends who made their final flight.

All the best
Duncan Stuart, ex - instrument panel layout and design HS Broughton