Wednesday 13 February 2013

Local History Special - The 1950 Mill Hill air crash

I received a request to dig up some info on the 1950 Dakota plane crash. 27 people died when a BEA Dakota bound for Scotland crashed at Highwood Hill in Mill Hill. Only one person on board the plan survived.

There is a great clip on the Pathe News website
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/airliner-crash-at-mill

There is also a write up in Aviation News reporting the details of the crash inquiry


You can still see evidence of the crash where the garden wall has been repaired. If you walk up Highwood Hill and turn right, have a look at the wall just past the first house on your right.

I find the local history of our area fascinating. If you know of any other stories which may be of interest to readers of the Barnet Eye, please get in touch.

It seems a shame that there is no memorial to the 27 people who died in the crash.

Keep an eye out for RE magazine, there is a great article on the subject in the latest edition

2 comments:

Mrs Angry said...

I actually know a story about this crash, as a relative of mine used to work as a nanny for the family who later owned the house. She claims that one night while she lived there, she experienced - well, a haunting, I suppose, a sort of re enactment of what happened, witnessed by another member of staff too. The story terrified me as a child.

Tony Andrews said...

As a 13 year old boy my friends and I heard about the crash and caught a 251 bus from Burnt Oak to The Rising Sun pub and walked a short distance to the crash site. The garden wall alongside the road was partly demolished and several trees were down. The aircraft was very badly damaged. Many years afterwards when travelling past the site, I always thought of the poor people who died there. You could still see the repair to the brick wall.
Just a short distance along that road on the left was an entrance to an army camp, which was used by The Royal Artillery during WWII. They had large anti-aircraft guns there and my friends and I used to take Sunday newspapers there to sell in the NAAFI to the soldiers. My friend's Mother used to work in a paper shop in Burnt Oak.