Have you ever wondered to yourself if two planes have ever collided mid-air?
Well, sure they have. A bunch of times, actually. They usually all have the same outcome,
if the crew aren't killed instantly in the collision, they're killed when the now smashed
aircraft plummets to the ground. What makes today's topic unique, is that these two planes
merged together after colliding in the air - and they were still functional! Well, sort of.
In the year 1940, the world was in the midst of the Second World War. As part of the Allied war
effort - the Empire Air Training Scheme had been set up, with the aim of training air crew men from
the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal Canadian
Air Force and the Royal New Zealand Air Force. The Empire Air Training Plan remains one of the
largest aviation training programs in history. Enrolled in the Australian wing of this program,
were 22-year-old Leonard Fuller, and 19-year-old Jack Hewson. They were stationed at Forest Hill,
a newly built air base near the city of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia.
Now before we all laugh at the people living in a city named "Wagga Wagga" - it's original
inhabitants were Aboriginal Australians and it's believed the name originates from their language
and translates loosely to "place of many crows". So there's an interesting bit of history there,
it's not just a funny sounding name, not that I as an Irishman am in any position to make fun of
place names, look at this - can you even pronounce that? The Welsh are even worse for this shite,
assumedly the English robbed all their vowels. On the 29th September Fuller and Hewson would
take part in a cross-country training exercise that would see them fly to a couple of towns
in the area before returning to Forest Hill. To do this they were each assigned a British
twin-engined Avro Anson and a navigator. By the way, this is pronounced Dún Laoghaire,
I wasn't really going to leave you hanging on that. This one? Yeah, I don't have a fucking clue.
Not long after taking off from Forest Hill, Fuller and Hewson were passing above Brocklesby,
a small town best known for this incident and literally nothing else. Fuller lead Hewson,
and at an altitude of about 1,000 ft, or 300 metres, the two made a banking turn. Fuller lost
sight of Hewson during this manoeuvre, as Hewson went from behind Fuller's craft to beneath it.
Then, the two planes slammed together. Fuller's belly came down on top of Hewson, the Anson's
propellors chewing into his plane. However, instead of immediately coming apart and crashing,
the two planes found themselves lodged together. Miraculously, of the two pilots and two
navigators, only Hewson had been hurt. His back had been injured when Fuller's propellors cut into
his fuselage - but he was not gravely wounded. You may have seen car accidents where a driver
emerges from a complete wreck somehow unscathed and walks away. Unfortunately the air men could
not afford this luxury, as their wreck was in the sky, and you can't walk away from anything
in the sky, because there's nothing to walk on. They had to make it to land for that,
and that's usually where plane crashes go bad. Fuller's engines had been completely knocked
out in the collision, but amazingly Hewson's craft was still operating at full power. Unfortunately,
there wasn't much Hewson could do, he couldn't steer his plane. Fuller then realised, that
although his plane was dead weight, he could still control the flaps while he piggybacked on Hewson.
He could effectively steer the combined craft as long as he remained latched onto Hewson's plane.
Realising he was the only one with any control over the current situation,
Fuller told the other crewmen to bail. He himself would stay on board the craft,
to ensure it wouldn't end up crashing into Brocklesby below
and killing residents or destroying their homes. Hewson and the two navigators jumped to safety.
Fuller now guided the conjoined planes away from the populated area below,
and began trying to head back to Forest Hill. He would never make it though, as the bottom plane
started to lose power. He had to find a spot to make an emergency landing. This would be no
easy task, considering he would basically be landing a plane he wasn't even sitting in - and
if the two planes came unstuck as he wrestled with the controls, he was in serious trouble.
He found a large open field and began circling it to make his landing. He made his descent,
and when the two planes touched down, they slid way across the field before coming to a stop. Both
planes were still completely wedged together, and Leonard Fuller was unharmed. Even he was surprised
at the miracle landing, commenting that it was one of the smoothest landings he'd ever made.
The freak accident and miraculous recovery made headlines around the world, casting a spotlight on
the small town of Brocklesby, in which now stands a Avro Anson engine as momument to the incident.
Fuller was commended for his "presence of mind, courage and determination" in risking his own
life to ensure not only was nobody else injured but that the two aircraft were not completely
destroyed. Both planes were able to be repaired, saving about 2 million dollars in today's money.
Fuller was promoted to sargeant, although he was also docked a weeks pay and confined to
barracks for two weeks for speaking about the incident to newspapers without authorisation.
Jack Hewson was treated for his injuries and made a full recovery. Both pilots graduated
the following month and went on to active service. Sadly, in 1944, Leonard Fuller was
killed when he was hit by a bus while out on his bike. In fact, Hewson's navigator,
Hugh Fraser was also killed shortly after, when his Lockheed Hudson collided with a tree during
a training mission in Northern Ireland in 1942 - killing him and his three crew men.
That means that despite coming from the opposite side of the globe, he is now buried not too far
away from me. It also means that two out of the four men who survived this incredible accident,
which is a one-of-its-kind as far as I'm aware, died just a few years later in
separate collisions in more mundane circumstances. I mean mundane isn't really a suitable word for
any fatal crash, but to have piloted this to safety only to be killed by a bus four years
later seems to me like a strange twist of fate. They didn't even live to see the end of the war.
But that's how these videos go. Sometimes they start off good and end up bad. Sometimes they
start off bad and end up good. A lot of times they start off bad and end up worse. That's just life,
I suppose. However your day may have started, I hope it ends up good. Maybe my video may
have even helped with that, and if that's the case, why not consider subscribing? That way
I can give you a happy ending every week. But not that kind. I don't do that. Buy my merch.