Photo shows a colourised image of LR412 in flight during 1943 – credit: Spitfire AA810 Project
Part of a crashed World War Two reconnaissance plane, heralded for its role in helping to defeat the Nazis, is undergoing restoration in preparation for featuring in a new national memorial.
The Rolls-Royce engine – which crashed into a Welsh mountainside in 1944, with the death of both the plane’s crew members – is due to be a centrepiece in a memorial in London in honour of the RAF’s Photo Reconnaissance Unit.
More than 80 years since it last flew, the engine is now being cleaned and treated at a base in Bicester, Oxfordshire.
Tony Hoskins, director of Spitfire AA810 Restoration Ltd – which is leading the campaign – said the plane was built of lightweight wood, and was powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines.
It was a versatile warplane which excelled as a spyplane, he said.
“This wooden wonder was so called as its construction was largely of plywood and balsa, non-critical materials to the war effort and able to be mass constructed in carpenter and furniture shops around the UK.”
History
This particular plane (Havilland Mosquito PR.IX LR412) was constructed in Hatfield in early 1943, and flew for the first time on 11th June 1943 at the hands of factory test pilot John de Havilland.
Aircraft LR412 was assigned to 540 Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron at RAF Benson. From logbook evidence, it flew at least 51 flights.
As it was purely a reconnaissance craft, the crews were unarmed, and flew all over occupied Europe – including France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Poland.
The plane crashed on Aran Fawddwy mountain in Wales on 9th February 1944 during daylight hours whilst undertaking a test flight. There were no eyewitnesses to the crash, Mr Hoskins said.
Search flights were carried out from RAF Benson on 10th February 1944 in an attempt to locate it, but they were unsuccessful.
The wreckage was eventually located by a local farmer during a routine check of his land, five days after the plane crashed.
Council archives recorded that two police officers attended the scene and located the wreckage of the aircraft together with the remains of two bodies.
The dead men were identified as Marek Slonski-Ostoja and Paul Riches – both crewmen were buried together at St Mary’s Church, Chessington.
A recovery team subsequently gathered material of interest and burnt much of the rest of the aircraft’s remains in a small ravine.
Campaign for a national monument
The Spitfire AA810 project is campaigning for crews, who flew the kind of spy operation LR412 was involved in, to be commemorated for the first time on a national photographic reconnaissance monument in Whitehall.
With about 80% of the intelligence used for the tactical planning of Allied strategic campaigns having come from photographic reconnaissance, the team behind the proposed monument said they wanted an impactful centrepiece – and felt that incorporating the remaining wreckage of LR412 was a fitting way to recognise the loss of the plane’s crew along with others lost during intelligence missions.
In 2024, the team negotiated the acquisition of the aircraft’s remains (which included one of its engines) and with the support of the Ministry of Defence the recovery of the remaining wreckage on the mountain was carried out in September 2024.
One engine remains near the crash site as a permanent local memorial.
For more information on the National Photographic Reconnaissance Monument Campaign click here.
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