“THE pulse of a Durham pit village stopped beating yesterday as a doomed RAF Vulcan bomber streaked towards it,” reported The Northern Echo on January 9, 1971.

“Screaming children fled from the playground as the ball of fire dive-bombed over their school.

“And seconds after the plane had steered a trail of terror over Wingate, relieved villagers were talking about a miracle which saved their homes – and their lives.”

Vulcan XM610 had been on a training flight over Northumberland when metal fatigue caused No 1 engine to explode near Kelso. The debris from the first explosion took out No 2 engine, and the broken fuel lines immediately caught fire.

Over Rothbury, the captain, Flt-Lt Garth Robert Alcock ordered the three crewmen in the rear of the plane to jump from around 600ft. They landed safely.

This left himself and his co-pilot, Flying Office Peter Hoskins, in the stricken aircraft. Their intention was to head for RAF Leeming, and they managed to get enough altitude to fly over Tyneside and then Sunderland – but thousands of people heard and saw the plane. It was an orange ball with debris tumbling from it.

By now, Alcock had no control over the plane which appeared to have set itself on a course out to sea. Over Easington, he jettisoned the canopy over the cockpit, which enabled Hoskins to press his ejector seat button and fling himself clear.

Then Alcock followed.

Their departures were witnessed by children and staff at Wingate County Junior School, and suddenly XM610 veered away from its harmless course to crash out at sea and came straight at Wingate.

“Many Wingate housewives were doing their weekend shopping when they heard the first screech of the approaching plane, abandoned by the pilot and co-pilot seconds earlier,” said the Echo. “The empty plane hurtled towards the village.

It appeared to be heading straight for the junior school where the children in the playground covered their ears but stood stock still, transfixed with terror (at nearby Wellfield Grammar School, the rugby coach ordered his charges on the field to “run”, prefixed by a colourful expletive).

At the last second, though, it changed course and headed for a row of houses.

“Terrified women and children in Station Lane dashed for cover as the plane whistled overhead,” said the Echo.

Miss Dorothy Skinner told the reporter: “I couldn’t see how it could miss the houses as it was coming down very low. At the very last moment it lifted slightly – that’s why everyone thought there was still someone inside – and then it just bellied into the field. There was a terrific whistling as it went over and then an explosion.”

Geographically, the plane crashed in Station Town, in a field behind the co-op, creating a huge crater. Emergency services and RAF personnel were quickly on site, and recovered much of the debris, although the two remaining engines had penetrated an old mineshaft and had gone so deep they had to be dug out later.

It was an extraordinary occurrence. No one dead. No one harmed. Not even slightly, although a couple of windows were reported to have been broken in Wingate.

The four crew members were awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service while the pilot received the Air Force Cross for averting a major tragedy.

Fruiterer William Harding of Front Street told the Echo: “I shudder to think what would have happened had the bomber crashed down any earlier. About two or three hundred people could have been killed.”

It left Wingate peppered with debris – and with doubts, and plenty of “what ifs”.

The official version, of the plane heading harmlessly out to sea only for it to suddenly and unpredictably corkscrew into the ground nine miles inland, does not quite tally with all the eyewitness reports of it being on a trajectory aimed at Wingate only for it to flip upwards at the last moment and then – miraculously – flop into the field.

GORDON MORTON brought this amazing story to our attention after our recent tales of nuclear-equipped Vulcan bombers being stationed at RAF Middleton St George in the early 1960s and appearing at airshows there.

“I was living in Wingate at the time, and my daughter was one of the pupils at the school,” he says. “On the day I heard such a noise that I rushed out of the house to see the plane diving into a field followed by the explosion.

“Jumping into my car, I went down to the bottom end of the village to see where it had gone in. It left such a hole that I could not believe an aircraft of that size had gone in there.

“Later, the people of Wingate were of the opinion that had the plane come down on the school, no medals would have gone to the crew. We could not understand why he did not fly down the coast away from any buildings and then cut inland to make for Leeming or Dishforth.

“Yes, as it happened there were no casualties, so a good outcome, but people are still a little resentful about what might have been.”

Many thanks, as ever, for all of your correspondence. If you have anything to add to any of today’s topics, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk. We'd especially like to hear from you if you can tell us anything about the day a Vulcan fell on County Durham.