FOR SUCH AN EXTENSIVE upland area close to various centres of population, aeroplane crashes in the Ochils appear to have been relatively - and mercifully - rare. There was a dramatic one recently, however, on the morning of 1 August, when a Cessna F152 made unintended acquaintance with the southern face of the slope between the Law and Andrew Gannel Hill. The pilot was a lucky boy: despite his plane ending upside-down and seriously bent on a hillside 580m above sea level, he was able to extricate himself and walk down to Tillicoultry unaided and, as far as is known, uninjured (apart from, presumably, a few bumps and abrasions).
There might be nothing new under the sun, but there is occasionally something new on the Ochils, and a chance to go sightseeing/rubbernecking was too good to miss. So two days after the crash I set off to look for it, despite not having a particularly good idea as to its location. The news reports had said simply "in the hills north of Tillicoultry", while the photograph on the BBC website was too zoomed-in to be of much help. My first guess was the upper Daiglen, on either the southwestern slope of Ben Cleuch or the east side of Ben Ever, so I climbed Wood Hill and walked along the ridge of Millar Hill towards Ben Ever, occasionally peering down into the Daiglen. No sign of any wreckage here, but the occasional buzzing of light aircraft further east gave a strong hint that I should try over that way. Then, just as I reached the Ben Cleuch plateau after the climb from Ben Ever, a helicopter zoomed low over the hill from the Andrew Gannel direction. That pretty much nailed it: the chopper crew had clearly been rattling around having a nosey.
My thought was to start down the ridge of Whum Hill - the spur between the Law and Andrew Gannel Hill - as this would allow views into the grassy scoops on either side. Almost immediately I couldn't help but spot the plane: nearer and larger than expected, a crumpled white mess lying in a squelchy green gully at grid reference NN912002.
I went across, and found that the plane was completely upside-down, although not in "two pieces" as some reports had it: the tail section was badly bent, but still attached. The pilot could easily have been trapped in his cockpit, as it was almost wedged into the spongy hollow. As it was, the angle had been just wide enough for him to make his escape. There were 704.3 hours on the clock, and the "Nav dial" read 109.45. This I initially took to be the bearing on impact, but my friend Grant Hutchison, who knows about such matters (his father flew fighters in WW2), later suggested it was almost certainly the radio frequency for a navigation beacon.
Never having seen the inside of a light aircraft before, I was struck by just how flimsy and basic it all was, the various bits of plastic dashboard and suchlike being reminiscent of a 1970s motor car. The pilot had indeed been very fortunate: no airbags here. (I was also struck in a more literal sense, banging my head twice, once on a strut, once on a wheel. Dangerous business, this aviation archaeology.)
Back home, I typed the plane's make and registration (G-BHDR) into Google and learned it had suffered an earlier prang, at Perth airport in November 2003 - see http://www.aaib.gov.uk/sites/aaib/publi cations/bulletins/february_2004/reims_027256.cfm
Four days later, 7 August, I was on the central Ochils again, and by now word had evidently got round. I didn't go to the crash site this time, but several people could be seen there, including some who had climbed the Whum Hill ridge from the Gannel glen - possibly the first people I've ever seen on that route despite my having used it regularly, for ascent or descent, for much of the past decade. Rather neatly, the wreck was in view from the cairn on the Law, but if one crossed back over to the west side of the fence and took a few strides along the path in either direction, it was lost.
I chatted with two friendly Tillicoultry schoolboys who were asking where the plane was, so was able to show them and then discuss routes off. They appeared never to have been very far up the Ochils before, so the presence of the wreck was helping the government's campaign to get people fit and healthy.
Quite when the Cessna was finally removed isn't something that I know for certain, but when I was back up there on 13 August it had gone, apparently plucked out crisply by helicopter, as there was no sign that anything had ever been there - no tyremarks, no dregs of wreckage, at least not that I could see from a few hundred metres away. So all's well that ends well, and it served to provide a fair bit of interest and exercise for a whole variety of people for a few days.
Cessna F152 on the Ochils (photograph taken by Ken Stewart on 8 August 2006)
QUITE HOW MANY planes have crashed on the Ochils over the years is something of an imponderable. The standard text for such research is David J Smith's excellent High Ground Wrecks: A Survey of Aircraft Crash Remains on the Hills and Mountains of the UK and Ireland (privately published in 1989 and seemingly now out of print). Smith lists a distressingly large number of incidents, but only six relate to the Ochils. The most well-known - because a small piece of wreckage is still there - is the De Havilland Tiger Moth that crashed in the dip between Blairdenon Hill and Greenforet Hill on 29 August 1957. The plane ID was G-AKCH, and it was flying from Perth to Donibristle (part of modern Inverkeithing), so appears to have been seriously off-course when it crashed. There was a Royal Navy airfield at Donibristle from 1917 to 1959.
All the other five known crashes occurred during WW2, and four involved Supermarine Spitfires. Three were in the second half of 1941: Spitfire X4318 flew into Cloon, a small hill northwest of Carnbo, on 1 July; Spitfire R6983 hit Bengengie on 26 September; and Spitfire X4904 was lost somewhere over the Ochils during formation practice on 17 October. Then on 10 June 1943 a fourth Spitfire, X4241, crashed on or around Cairnmorris Hill. All four lost Spitfires were flying out of Grangemouth.
By far the biggest plane to come down on the Ochils was the Consolidated B-24A Liberator bomber AM926 from 120 Squadron, which hit Tarmangie in cloud on 10 December 1941, en route from Dyce to Nutts Corner near Belfast.
My Ochils-wandering, war-researching friend Gordon Smith (no relation to David J) informs me that Liberator AM926 was flown on occasion - but presumably not on this occasion - by the celebrated U-boat hunter Flt Lt (later Commander) Terence Malcolm Bulloch, about whom there is a fair bit to be found in print and on the web. Bulloch had been the pilot when this plane made 120 Squadron's first attack on a U-boat, on 22 Oct 1941. Another of David J Smith's books, Action Stations 7, reports that Liberator AM926 also attacked a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor the same day as the U-boat attack - which, as Gordon Smith notes, was "an unlikely dogfight between two four-engined bombers".
High Ground Wrecks notes that no trace of the Liberator or any of the Spitfires has been found (the first edition of the book came out in 1976). Given the size of these planes - particularly the Liberator - it sounds like the wreckage was diligently cleared soon after the event in each case. If any reader can recall any of these incidents, or indeed knows of any other plane crashes on the Ochils, I would be interested to hear from them, either via the postal address given on page 8, or by email at bencleuch@googlemail.com