JOHN Quinton had flown many wartime missions, been awarded the DFC and was a squadron leader when, in 1946, he returned to Civvy Street and to the company which previously had employed him.

Whatever it was that he missed – the camaraderie, his son supposes – he re-enlisted in 1951 and on August 13, 65 years ago this Saturday, set off on a routine training flight from RAF Leeming, in North Yorkshire.

Quinton, still just 30 and again a flight lieutenant, was one of six RAF officers on the Wellington – joined on his first ever powered flight by 16-year-old Air Training Crops corporal Derek Coates, from Middlesbrough.

Moments earlier, a two-seat Martinet had also left Leeming, the pilot accompanied by Malcolm Bruton, another ATC corporal from Middlesbrough. The boys were on annual camp.

The plan was that the Wellington should intercept the smaller plane. Within ten minutes visual contact had been made over Hudswell, near Richmond but – suddenly in cloud – the two aircraft collided, scattering wreckage over the village and far beyond.

Only Derek Coates survived, Flt Lt Quinton posthumously receiving the George Cross – the highest gallantry award when not facing direct enemy action – for sacrificing his own life to save the younger man’s.

Now Roger Quinton, just one year old at the time of his father’s death, is joining Sam, his daughter-in-law, in writing his father’s biography. “I just wanted to put it down,” he says. “Derek has never forgotten, I hope to ensure that others won’t, either.”

It’s happily coincidental that the summer edition of Memorial Flight, the magazine of Lincoln’s Lancaster Association, should have devoted several pages to the story. It’s headed “A very gallant gentleman.”

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The mid-air collision happened about 5pm. Sharp off the mark, like Richmond fire brigade, the following day’s Northern Echo devoted much of the front page to the tragedy.

“Both planes were torn to pieces by the impact,” we reported. “Many villagers thought that pieces of aircraft would fall on their houses.”

Villager Fred Parkin heard the crash. “It would be just a couple of minutes before the plane piled in, but it seemed like an eternity,” he said. Though one of the Wellington’s engines landed in a turnip field, no one in Hudswell was hurt.

The collision is thought to have happened when cloud suddenly enveloped the aircraft, the force of the impact shattering the Wellington’s astrodome inwards.

The bomber’s crew were wearing harnesses but not parachutes. Realising the situation, Quinton at once handed the only available parachute to Coates, instructing him to jump through a hole in the fuselage and to pull the rip cord.

The inquest, just 12 days later, supposed that the centrifugal force of the resultant spin had prevented any others from reaching parachutes. The Wellington’s two pilots were found dead in their seats.

Margaret Quinton received her late husband’s George Cross at Buckingham Palace on February 27 1952, the first investiture of the new Queen’s reign. The citation spoke of a supreme act of gallantry, a plane that was plunging to the earth out of control and of Quinton’s “superhuman speed and most commendable courage and self-sacrifice” in assessing the situation.

“By his actions,” it added, “he displayed the most conspicuous heroism.”

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Derek Coates was attended by the village doctor, given a cup of tea by the farmer, taken off to Catterick Military Hospital but little worse for his ordeal – “comfortable,” they insisted, then as now.

He remained in the ATC, emigrated to Australia in the 1960s and, now aged 81, has been tracked down for Memorial Flight by Roger McGrory.

“The astrodome shattered. I thought there had been an explosion,” the survivor recalls. “Flt Lt Quinton dived over me, pulled me to my feet, pulled down the parachute which was hanging just above us, put it on my chest and turned me around.”

Briefly knocked out on evacuating the plane, Coates came around in cloud. “When I came out of the cloud, I looked down and thought ‘Oh, my God’.

“There was a bit of a bank and, at the bottom of it, the front part of the Wellington and a group of people standing around it, so I thought that all the others on board were OK.

“I carried on floating down, not a care in the world. At the time it seemed like a lovely sensation.”

The eight dead were taken to the village institute, now demolished, where a memorial plaque was erected in 2011. John Quinton and two others are buried in St John’s churchyard in Leeming, Malcolm Bruton in Acklam cemetery, Middlesbrough. “Mercifully,” says the Hudswell plaque, “no one on the ground was hurt.”

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Alan Mitcheson, was a young National Serviceman at RAF Leeming and was sent to Hudswell as part of the crash guard. He was already familiar with aviation heroism and aviation tragedy.

As a 12-year-old, March 31 1944, he’d watched a crippled Halifax bomber piloted by Cyril Barton crash land into the colliery yard at Ryhope, near Sunderland – deliberately missing houses and the pit head – after a night time air battle over Nuremberg.

Barton was killed but awarded the VC. Many years later, Alan – now in Silksworth – helped the campaign which in 1985 resulted in a memorial on the colliery site.

Back in 1951, he was in the RAF Leeming orderly room when Quinton arrived. “I always remember that he looked older than the others and that his uniform was very new. I hadn’t realised that he’d just returned.”

Though the Hudswell crash “devastated” the base, post-war Leeming was still no stranger to disaster. In the 20 months that he was there, says Alan, 18 men died in air accidents.

“Television was just coming in. If it had happened today, it would have been a major concern, wouldn’t it?”

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As a military man might term it, it is necessary to reccy such stories. It’s purely for research purposes, therefore, that the column a couple of times of late has found itself in the George and Dragon at Hudswell – among the country’s first community-owned pubs.

The ale’s excellent, the pie perfect, the view from the beer garden quite splendid and the hens decreeing pecking order at our feet.

It’s also wholly coincidental that several aircraft appear for hours to have been flying in never decreasing circles over the village. Some suppose them to be practising for the then-imminent Sunderland Air Show, others that they’re Americans.

None complains. A chap on the next table stares steadfastly skywards. “We’re hardly going to do that in Hudswell,” he says, “now are we?”

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Flt Lt John Quinton GC DFC is also remembered elsewhere. Middlesbrough’s ATC headquarters carries his name, as does an accommodation block at RAF Leeming. The top ATC administrative award for senior NCOs is also given in his memory.

Roger Quinton hopes that the book may further perpetuate his father’s heroism and would love to hear from anyone with memories of that day. He’s at rmquinton@gmail.com and Sam at samquinton1@hotmail.com

Thanks also to Memorial Flight editor Tom Allett for help with today’s column.