Flt Lt Cyril Ingleby DFC
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July 4, 1948 was the date of the last mid-air collision in British airspace involving a civilian airliner.
The accident happened when an RAF Avro York transport aircraft collided with a Douglas DC-6 airliner of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) while both were circling in bad weather, awaiting instruction to land at RAF Northolt, just outside London.
Seven people lost their lives on the RAF York and 32 on the SAS aircraft when they both crashed in woods near Northwood directly North of the airfield. It was SAS's first fatal aviation accident and was at the time the deadliest civilian aviation accident in the UK. It is still the deadliest mid-air collision in British history.
The RAF York was carrying Sir Edward Gent, the British High Commissioner for Malaya. Gent had been recalled to London to answer to parliament and account for why he had lost control of the territory due to the communist uprising.
Among those also killed onboard the RAF aircraft, flying from Malaysia to London, through Cairo and Malta, was Flight Lieutenant Cyril Ingleby, of Parker Place, Derby. He had served in the RAF throughout the Second World War in various Bomber Command squadrons, surviving countless combat operations, including one occasion when he was the only crew member to survive a crash. Cyril was a Wireless Operator and also an Air Gunner.
In 1942, at Buckingham Palace, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for gallantry, after making 60 bombing trips over Germany. It was thus a doubly ironic and tragic blow to his family when he was killed, two years after the end of the war, on a non-combat flight.
The airman's grandson has researched the crash and how his grandfather died, and has turned up copies of newspaper reports from 1948, maps of the crash site, his grandfather's RAF service record and even material from the crash investigation.
The family found the crash site at Battlerswells Woods in 2008 and installed a memorial plaque.
In the clearing behind the plaque there are still several sheared off, charred, outer tree stump casings. It is understood that this is common with air crashes and when the ground is contaminated with aviation fuel - the insects don’t eat the stump casings while traces of fuel remain, and it can take decades for them to biodegrade. It’s quite an eerie location, all the more remarkable that it remains a pocket of woodland in an area that has predominantly become a mass of sprawling urban development as London and its suburbs have grown.
In his early years, Cyril Ingleby lived with his grandparents after his father died when he was only six months old.
He married Constance Armroyd, of Longford Street , in 1940. She would have been well known as the postmistress at Rose Hill Post Office, Normanton Road, for many years, before she retired and moved to live in Chaddesden. His grandfather, Mr A Hughes, ran billiards rooms on Babington Lane and Normanton Road, in Derby. Cyril managed the Babington Lane rooms before joining International Combustion as a storekeeper. Cyril was an expert billiards player who represented Scotland on 2 occasions. His daughter has one of his international caps, and also his Billiard cue. Cyril was born in England but the family have connections to Scotland.
Flight Lieutenant Ingleby was laid to rest at Nottingham Road cemetery on July 12, 1948. In 1966, his son Roger, who died aged only 23, was buried with him.
Sadly, in more recent times, this headstone had fallen and lay broken in two.
In 2023, his daughter, who had been only 8 years old at the time of the crash, arranged for a new headstone to be installed by Horobins Memorial Masons. This is now a fitting memorial to a remarkable man.
