Appendix One : Tony Lovell’s fatal accident re-assessed
Up until 1992, the only documentary source of information on the crash at Old Sarum and its possible cause was the aircraft accident record card held by the Ministry of Defence, on which the salient details were summarised thus:
17/8/1945
Spitfire Mk XIIC EN 234.
Communications Flight. 11 Gp.
Pilot W/C ADJ Lovell No 40402. 1510 Flying Hours.
Crashed at Old Sarum in low flight did two slow rolls lost height in second and struck the ground with the starboard wing.
Unauthorised Aerobatics.
Slow roll pilot not strapped in.
Local flying at the time.
Time 11-35am Pilot killed.
This card was probably the main source of the few references to the crash which appear in the post-war literature (“Lovell was killed on August 17 1945 when he crashed into a field adjoining Old Sarum airfield whilst doing aerobatics in a Spitfire” - Men of the Battle of Britain, Wynn 1989). The School of Air Support’s Operations Record Book is even less informative (“Wing Commander A.D. Lovell (40402), GD., killed in flying accident”) but at that period it is fairly tight-lipped anyway. [1]
Record card description open to query
Even this brief description should give pause for thought, for in Spitfire terms at least the words “two slow rolls” and “pilot not strapped in” should be mutually exclusive terms. Even one slow roll, without the safety harness done up, would be a near impossibility because there would then be nothing to prevent the pilot falling out of his seat once the aircraft was inverted and relinquishing his grasp of the control column.
Holding the necessary amount of top rudder on to prevent the nose of the aircraft sinking below the horizon as it rolls would anyway in those circumstances not be possible; a lot of boot is needed to keep a heavy-nosed Spitfire slow-rolling, and this cannot be applied if the pilot is unable to brace himself against his straps and seat. A low-flying pilot may also well have his cockpit open - in which case, with his straps not done up, he will fall out of the aircraft as it slowly inverts.
Court of Inquiry
At the end of 1992 however the Air Historical Branch supplied a transcript of part of the 1945 Court of Inquiry’s Précis of Proceedings:
PRECIS OF PROCEEDINGS
Short Account of the Accident
Wg Cdr Lovell, of the School of Air Support, took off in Spitfire EN234 from Old Sarum airfield at 1135 hours on 17 August 1945, to carry out a duly authorised local flying exercise.
The aircraft took off and according to four eye-witnesses became airborne about two thirds of the way down the airfield. The undercarriage was immediately retracted and the aircraft held down for three or four seconds. The aircraft was then seen to climb slightly and to do a roll to the right.
It was seen to finish up level at about 100 feet and to commence another roll in the same direction. Almost immediately the aircraft stalled and struck the ground with its starboard wing causing the aircraft to disintegrate.
Brigadier Hicks, who was one of the first at the scene of the crash states that the pilot had been thrown about five yards from the main wreckage and was dead. He states the pilot had round him only the parachute harness and there was no sign of the safety straps being used.
Technical investigation of the wreckage revealed no technical failures had occurred and that all controls were at the correct setting for flying. The aircraft had first struck some telephone wires about 20 feet from the ground. The Q Type safety harness was found to be undone and the left shoulder strap broken. It was found impossible to ascertain whether the harness would have been correctly adjusted had it been done up.
Wg Cdr Lovell had flown a total solo of 1510 hours, of which 1190 hours were on Spitfire aircraft.
Findings of the Investigating Officer (Wg Cdr Beaumont) 23.8.45
Primary Cause
(i) The pilot doing a roll just after take off at too low an altitude.
(ii) The pilot was not strapped in.
(iii) In view of the pilot's exceptional ability and being a brilliant and distinguished operational pilot, the reasons for this accident are all the more inexplicable. There is no doubt that the pilot must have been fully aware of the flying regulations which, the Investigating Officer considers, are quite adequate at this Station.
The possibility of the reaction of coming from a state of war to a state of peace, to an officer of this calibre, must have caused a momentary aberration of the flying rules [sic] and a sudden urge to overconfidence, with fatal results to himself.
Remarks of the Commanding Officer (Wg Cdr B Moore) 23.8.45
Concurs
Remarks of the Air Officer Commanding (Air Cdre B H C Russell, No 11 Group) 29.8.45
Agrees with the Conclusions of the Investigating Officer and am making further inquiries to ascertain whether this was an isolated incident or not. The answer to this question will not, however, affect the Findings of this Enquiry.
Remarks of the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AVM Vincent, for A.O.C.-in-C Fighter Command) 19.9.45
This accident was due to an error of judgement on the part of the pilot whilst performing aerobatics at low altitude in contravention of K.R. & A.C.I. para 717 clause 2. There is no evidence to support the Investigating Officer’s conclusions that certain reaction must have caused momentary aberration [sic].
This ‘Short Description’ enlarges on the record card by adding these details:
1. The whole incident had been seen by four service eye-witnesses.
2. The two slow rolls mentioned on the aircraft record card had actually been two right-handed slow rolls on take-off.
3. The first slow roll had been a successful manoeuvre.
4. On entering the second slow roll at 100ft, the Spitfire had immediately stalled , and the starboard wingtip had touched the ground.
4. Tony Lovell’s body had been found 15ft away from the wreckage, with no signs of his Q-type safety harness having been done up.
5. The left strap of the safety harness was nonetheless broken.
6. The Court of Inquiry covened on 22 August - presumably in anticipation of the investigating officer’s report, which was received the following day.
7. The investigating officer, the C.O. and the AOC Group, close to the subject-matter, all voted for a verdict which applied some kind of extenuating circumstance to the pilot’s actions. From a distance, Fighter Command preferred to lay the blame wholly on the pilot.
In the mid-1990s the sequence of events thus revealed was put to a number of Spitfire pilots for comment. Most of these had flown with or known Tony Lovell, and they divided into two camps: those who broadly accepted the Court of Inquiry version and described Tony’s aerobatics as suicidal in a literal sense; and those - the majority - who confessed themselves unable to understand the accident as described, either technically, or given the attitudes and aptitudes of the pilot involved.
In particular the late Air Commodore Al Deere, who had trained with Tony and had met him again at Hornchurch during the Battle of Britain, found the story hard to believe. He suggested that there had to be an alternative explanation - perhaps mechanical, and found it hard to believe that
“a pilot of Tony's experience would attempt a second roll on take-off, to my knowledge an unheard-of manoeuvre in a Spitfire. Perhaps, therefore, the second roll was involuntary due to loss of control...” [2]
Likewise Jeffrey Quill, just before he died, described the verdict of the Court of Inquiry as “perhaps inevitable but not at all satisfactory”. He strongly criticised the comments of the representative of A.O.C-in-C Fighter Command as “ignorant and stupid..... he seemed to have little understanding of the psychology of the young operational pilots under his command”. [3]
The suicide theory
Wallens and Stapleton - two of Tony Lovell’s fellow pilots on 41 Sqdn - held the view that he had deliberately written himself off at the war’s end (Wallens had been with Tony in ‘B’ Flight from 1938 to 1940). Spitfire pilots in general tend to agree that to slow-roll without strapping in would be to commit suicide; some feel that even to attempt one slow roll on take-off was suicidal [rather ignoring the fact that Tony Lovell had been seen to do his first slow roll perfectly successfully]. Others accurately or otherwise mention Cowboy Blatchford and Adrian Warburton, both of whom they suspect of flying onwards and upwards until they deliberately ran out of fuel.
A major flaw in this argument was Tony Lovell’s faith. He did not appear to have abandoned his devout Roman Catholicism during the war - he was known to have gone into retreat for 10 days in a Dominican house in Rome in the summer of 1944 after a private audience with the Pope - and his mother would still have been expecting him to become a monk or a priest at the war’s end. [4]
(Had Tony survived the war, his career might well have been similar to that of Michael Constable Maxwell, who had been a year ahead of him at Ampleforth and whose last command - a Spitfire squadron in Malaya - had come to an end late in 1947. [5] “His youthful thoughts of the priesthood had remained dormant throughout the war years..... he felt strongly that it was God’s will..... and he decided that at the end of his tour in the east he would visit Ampleforth and consult the Abbot.” There followed a five-year period at Ampleforth as a novice, before a return to the RAF to command a Vampire squadron.) [6]
In 1992 the Abbot of Ampleforth - then Fr Patrick Barry, head of the Benedictine order in Britain - was consulted on the likelihood of Tony Lovell, as a very devout Catholic, having committed what he would have known to be the mortal sin of suicide. The Abbot had also been at school with Tony; his reply was surprising, and much of it is given here:
You revived memories and posed deep questions in our too brief conversation at Stanbrook..... About the question of Tony Lovell’s apparent suicide - you asked me whether any such thing was compatible with his high aspirations to become a priest and evidence that he led a good Catholic life during the war. I referred (rather obviously) off the cuff by noting the strain under which all such pilots must have lived. Since then these points have occurred to me:
I think that for anyone like Tony Lovell with high Christian ideals there was only one justification during the war for the business of killing in which they were engaged - and for the fighter pilots..... it was a direct act of personal responsibility. That justification was that they were taking the only possible means of resisting something which was really evil and lethal to Christianity - namely Nazism. However there were increasing problems about this simple view. The advent of the aggressively atheistic soviet regime as an honoured ally put a very great strain on many Catholics at the time, as I well remember.
Then 1945 came with devastatingly contradictory signals. VE day came with Poland (for whose liberty we had ostensibly gone to war) firmly and apparently for ever in the grip of the soviets and with it the whole of Christian Eastern Europe. There was a left wing English government who celebrated their advent by singing in Parliament the hymn of the soviets; that doesn’t seem very formidable to us now; at the time, with the inexorable advance of the soviet army, it seemed to many very formidable indeed. Things have worked out better than we feared, but at the time it was very unnerving.
Then finally in August came the atomic bombs which led into VJ day and Tony Lovell’s death. Leonard Cheshire took the bombs in his stride but it would not surprise me if to Tony Lovell they were as apocalyptic and foreboding as they did in fact seem to many of us at the time. If they were last shock that broke him [sic], that would certainly be understandable. If I can understand, then undoubtedly the God of Mercy can understand even better and forgive. [7]
The need for more data
Suicide or not, the contradictions and inconsistencies of the Court of Inquiry report and verdict still remained. Air Commordore Deere’s suggestion that the crash was the result of mechanical failure was one that required to be tested; more data on the events of 17th August 1945 was needed.
An appeal for information was launched in the Salisbury Journal, and a search through back issues of the paper turned up this contemporary description of the accident as described by civilian eye-witnesses:
PLANE CRASH AT OLD SARUM
RESIDENTS' NARROW ESCAPE
Two adjoining farmhouses in Castle-road, Salisbury, occupied by Mr.F.C.Gallop and Mr. A. Wingrove respectively, narrowly escaped being struck on Friday morning when a plane swept through their gardens and crashed on the slopes of Old Sarum, a few hundred yards away.
No residents were hurt, but the pilot, Wing-Cmdr. Lovell, who had recently joined the School of Air Support at Old Sarum as an instructor, was killed.
Wing-Cmdr. Anthony Desmond Joseph Lovell was 26 years of age, a distinguished pilot, holding the D.F.C. with Bar, and 1939-43 American D.F.C. His home was in Ireland, where the body was taken for burial.
The plane, a Spitfire, took off from Old Sarum at about 11.45 a.m., and was doing a slow roll. It crashed through the telephone wires at the back of Old Sarum Farm, knocked the flag off the flagpole standing only a few feet from the house, swept past Old Castle Farm adjoining, and killed five pullets in a low hedge.
Then it hit the slopes of Old Sarum, rebounded, and broke into pieces.
People standing in the bar at the Old Castle Inn, who heard the roar of a plane and the crash, rushed to the scene to see if they could be of assistance. They found that the pilot had been thrown clear, but he was already dead.
Mrs. Gallop, of Old Sarum Farm, told a Journal representative that she was standing in a window in the front of the house, when suddenly there was a roar and a crash. The Union Jack fluttered to the ground, and telegraph wires fell across the garden. It all happened in a flash, and she did not see the plane.
Another eye-witness said that he was walking up Castle-road and saw the plane sweep past the farmhouses. He heard a rattle, as if it had struck something, and then it seemed to turn turtle and crash on the slopes.
Wreckage of the plane was strewn over a wide area.
This newspaper story appeared on 24th August - but by then the RAF investigating officer had already submitted his report to the Court of Inquiry. [8] The account does however make clear the geography of the accident, which was further clarified in 1995 by interviews on site with surviving civilian eyewitnesses of the crash and its aftermath.
New personal testimony
(a) F/Sgt Pollard
When Tony Lovell took off, the comms flight pilot was deep in conversation at the door of the flight office. He had the impression of some kind of swerving movement taking place at the edge of his field of vision; he did not bother to turn and look. Also had the impression of a noise or bang “and shortly afterwards the flight commander - Rowell - came in and announced that he'd done an aerobatic manoeuvre and killed himself.”
(b) Farmer’s son Jack Gallop
Beyond the western perimeter track, busy with harvest, the son of Fiennes Gallop had looked up and seen the Spitfire invert. Jack Gallop was then 16 years old, and was helping with harvest near The Beehive - a small house about a third of a mile north-east of Old Sarum - when he saw a Spitfire about 500 yards away.
The aircraft was doing a slow roll in the direction of the farmhouse which stood on the saddle of ground connecting Old Sarum with Castle Hill: there was nothing in the note of the engine to suggest that it was not running properly:
“I looked up and saw him go upside down, saw it do the one loop. It wasn't a fast one. It couldn't have looped again, it was too low. He sounded all right. He was so low I said to Albert, who worked for us, what the hell's he doing?
“It flew in front of the house. I didn't see it crash. I ran back to the farmhouse and ran indoors.... mother had been dusting in the front upstairs room.... He was in between the end of next door and the (telegraph) pole which is still there. It's a miracle how he got through. He took a piece out, went over the fence, went into the side of the first ring and bounced off it. It hit the bushes all down.”
Smallholder Fiennes Gallop was on the scene within seconds, only to find - as he told Jack afterwards - that the pilot was dead in the cockpit:
“Not a scratch on him.... (that's) what my father told me.”
The distance between the house on one side, and the telegraph pole on the other, was little more than 35 feet. Tony Lovell had flown through this gap at no more than six feet above ground level:
The lilac hedge in the little front garden had been demolished by the Spitfire, as had the chicken-run with its 6ft-high wire netting up the bank beside the house, directly in the line of flight; and five pullets were dead. The fences were down in the paddock beyond, and scrape marks were visible in the turf where the aircraft had half-slid, half-cartwheeled its way across to Old Sarum ramparts. There was no fire.
From these sources, and with the assistance of Dr E. Trimble [9] of the Air Accident Investigation Branch, it became possible to prepare the following reconstruction of the events of 17th August 1945.
The fatal accident: a new view
RAF Old Sarum was and is a north-east / south-west grass airfield on the western outskirts of Salisbury, at a height of some 80m. The station takes its name from an Iron Age fortification on a small hill immediately to the west-south-west, whose highest point is at 122m; this Old Sarum Hill is joined to nearby Castle Hill by a slightly lower saddle of land which runs across and at right-angles to the 240º take-off line. The lowest point on this ridge is about 95m. [10]
Thursday August 16th 1945 was one long victory celebration in the Mess of the School of Air Support at Old Sarum, and there were signs of a repeat performance breaking out on the following day. [11]
It was therefore shortly after 1100hrs on a bright August morning that Tony Lovell, who was never at ease in large cheerful gatherings of people he barely knew, crossed the road from the School to the Communications Flight crew room. On his way into the flight office to book out his flight (probably self-authorised) he passed comms flight pilot John Pollard, who noticed nothing out of the ordinary in his manner. Tony was also sober, for had he not been, the Court of Inquiry would have referred to the subject.
Tony was anyway known to be a dry flier, and one of the Investigating Officer's early tasks would have been to investigate his mess bill.
He signed out for EN 234, the comms flight's Spitfire XIIC. This was an exotic beast, the sports coupé of the range, which used by at least one other instructor - Tom Neil - as a weekend hack (Old Sarum to Northolt in 12 minutes); it had no particular individual faults.
There were in fact several Spitfires in the Old Sarum communications flight. EN234 had been among the first Mk XIIs to be delivered to 41 Sqdn in the Spring of 1943, and W/Cdr Neil - then coincidentally commanding that squadron at High Ercall - had flown it at the time, and rejected it, while choosing his personal aircraft as CO.
Although the mark had been prone to the carburettor problems which had beset early Griffon engines, EN234 had appeared perfectly serviceable to Tom Neil when flown regularly by him at Old Sarum.
There is little doubt that Tony would have been attracted to it; the clipped wings would have reminded him of the Spitfire Vs he flew in Malta (and possible at Ismailia), but with a lot more poke. It would not have been much more powerful than the Mustangs he flew earlier in the year, however, or the Spitfire IX in Italy.
The duty fitter helped to secure the Q-type harness; no-one else paid attention to the bang of the Coffman starter. The duty fitter pulled away the chocks.
It would not have been impossible to have done without the services of the ground crew, but again we must assume that there was a duty crew even if only because the Investigating Officer must have interviewed them, and would have reported any deficiency to the Court of Inquiry. And there were other aircraft that needed attention that morning - the comms flight Beechcraft in-bound from Germany, for example.
No-one saw Tony cross himself - he always did, as did others - when he taxied out and took off towards Old Sarum fort. Airborne two-thirds of the way down Old Sarum airfield in a perfect Mk XII take-off, he retracted his wheels immediately.
We assume a clean take-off, on the grounds that a dodgy one would surely have been commented on by at least one of the four eye-witnesses. From this it may also be assumed that Tony Lovell was not caught out by the fact that he was flying a Griffon-engined Spitfire (whose propellor turned clockwise when seen from the cockpit) as opposed to the “left-handed” Merlin of the types he usually flew.
Failure to appreciate the difference led many less experienced pilots to apply the wrong rudder once they were rolling, with the result that their take-off line - if they were lucky - was a great deal more to starboard than they had intended, as Dr Alfred Price describes in Spitfire:
“On one occasion a pilot took off.... without receiving a briefing on this important difference. As he lined up for take-off he wound on full right rudder trim and put on a bootful of right rudder to catch the expected fierce torque from the engine when it took effect. He pushed open the throttle and, with everything set the wrong way, Spitfire swung viciously to the right..... she finally got airborne at ninety degrees to the intended direction of take-off, narrowly missing a hangar in her path.....”
See also R.V. Ashman's description of taking off for the first time in a Griffon-engined Mk.XIV:-
“The take-off was a nightmare.... this engine rotated the propeller the opposite way to any other Spitfire and I'd taken note of it when I read the handbook. Pilots on all aircraft have to trim the rudder for take-off to counter the torque of the propeller shaft which swings the aircraft to one side, otherwise he hasn't the strength in the opposite leg to keep it straight on the runway and the aircraft will swing off it before becoming airborne, as the power builds up. Properly trimmed, the rudder will respond to the slightest pressure of the pilot's feet. I don't know why - nerves, a hangover or whatever - but I trimmed her for the Merlin engine as usual, the opposite to this Griffon, and opened the throttle far too wide for take-off, and too soon.
I could feel the terrific thrust in my back as the speed built up far too fast; with my left foot hard down to keep her straight it was of no avail. She veered off the runway sidewways, but luckily she became airborne at the wide intersection of the runways 45 degrees off course....”
As soon as the Spitfire XII was airborne the difference in flying technique between the two types was minimal.
Tony Lovell’s Spitfire after take-off was seen to be held down for three or four seconds before climbing slightly. There was then a roll to the right, out of which the aircraft came level - but at no more than 50ft, rather than the 100ft mentioned by the Court of Inquiry.
The description by the Court of Inquiry eyewitnesses indicates that the pilot intended a slow roll on take-off. They saw the Spitfire being held down so that airspeed would increase; they saw the nose being lifted which would otherwise drop during the manoeuvre that was to follow; the implication of a planned slow roll is very strong. That the aircraft is spoken of as coming level out of the slow roll indicates that it was properly executed; had the Spitfire been at a height of 100ft, however, it would easily have cleared the ridge of land that lay in its path. [12]
Tony Lovell now needed to climb at least 50ft to clear the saddle of land between Castle Hill on his port side, and Old Sarum Hill on his right. However at this vital moment he was evidently unable to gain the necessary height, and the suggestion is that the controls had been jammed by an object loose in the cockpit. [13]
We now see Tony’s Mk XII fast approaching a ridge of land obstructed at its lower levels by roadside trees to port, a pair of semi-detached gabled cottages to starboard, and by telegraph poles and wires. There is a gap of some 35 ft in these obstacles (apart from the wires) to the immediate left of the cottages, which are sited on the slope imediately below the ridge; their ground level is some 10ft below the crest.
The semi-detached cottages, now known as nos 1 and 2 Old Sarum Cottages, were then called Old Sarum Farm and Old Castle Farm respectively. The wingspan of the Spitfire XII would have been just over 32ft - like some “clipped, cropped and clapped” Spitfire Vs, it had shorter, squared-off wings for greater manoeuvrability at low altitude.
Tony Lovell aimed for the 35-ft gap and scraped over the ridge, taking the telephone wires with him. As he did so, his starboard wingtip, passing within inches of the cottage gables, demolished a sturdy lilac hedge in the front garden and tore the Union Jack from the flagpole at the garden gate. The aircraft then carried away a 6ft-high poultry run beside the house, on the crest of the ridge. [14]
Because of the deceleration of its starboard wing, the Spitfire - at this point less than 6ft from the ground - went starboard wing down as it slid over the crest of the ridge. From the airfield 1000 yards away, it seemed to eyewitnesses that a second slow roll to the right was being attempted. [15]
The aircraft slithered across the paddock beyond the crest of the ridge, tearing away the fences and leaving skid-marks in the turf; it bounced off the ramparts at the entrance to Old Sarum fort, and broke up in the field between the fort and the Amesbury road.
The smallholder from Old Sarum Farm, Fiennes Gallop, ran up to find Tony Lovell dead in the cockpit, with - as he told his son - not a scratch on him. Mindful of the risk of fire he hastily undid the seat harness and dragged the pilot clear of the wreckage.
Either the hedge (it was a sturdy hedge) or the chicken-run (with its netting held up on stakes six feet high) had been Tony Lovell's undoing. His starboard wingtip had certainly fouled the first, and had probably hit an upright on the chicken run as well.
Decelerated, the starboard wing dropped. From the airfield, men saw the wing go down and - having just watched one slow roll - assumed that were seeing the start of a second one.
It would have been a minute or so before the crash crew arrived on the scene, posting a sentry by the field gate to keep at bay the inevitable crowd of small boys looking for pieces of broken perspex to turn into rings or other souvenirs.
A passing soldier who asked the sentry what had happened was told - even then - that the aircraft had been doing a slow roll when the wingtip had touched the ground. This story obviously spread very quickly, and was actually being offered as a statement of fact on the day of the accident itself by senior officers at RAF Old Sarum.
Tony's log-book has not survived, but it can hardly be imagined that as someone who thought all time lost that was not spent in the air, he neglected to keep in his hand with whatever the SAS had to offer in the way of aircraft. From another pilot's log [16] we do know that Tony was flown out of Old Sarum as a passenger in the Dominie shortly after his arrival, and that he flew the comms flight’s Proctor to Biggin Hill a week later. It seems unlikely that Tony Lovell, professional to his fingertips, was not aware of the lie of the land around the airfield.
Conclusions
The best assumption is that Tony Lovell, now known to have been an aerobatic pilot of the highest order, did one controlled slow roll on take-off from Old Sarum but was prevented by mechanical failure - possibly a restriction of the flying controls - from gaining height afterwards. At very low level his starboard wingtip struck a series of obstacles (hedge, telephone wires, flag hoist) and the aircraft went starboard wing down – a manoeuvre misinterpreted by those on the distant airfield as the start of a second slow roll. [17]
The Spitfire appears to have turned over as it slid over the ground, then bounced off the outer ramparts of Old Sarum iron-age fort, disintegrating the while; the deceleration forces were such that the left strap of the Q-type harness failed. [18] Tony Lovell was then pulled from the wreckage by farmer Fiennes Gallop, whose house he had so narrowly missed, and who was responsible for undoing the safety harness buckle. [19]
A submission to this effect was made to, and accepted by, the office of the Chief of Air Staff in 1996, and a note to that effect has since been added to the official record.
NOTES
1. The Old Sarum ORB does not record the fact that the Station’s Dominie was used to fly the body to Northern Ireland, nor the fact that W/Cdr Minifie attended the funeral in Portrush - presumably representing the School of Air Support. None of Tony Lovell’s actual colleagues seems to have been there.
2. Air Commodore Alan Deere pers. comm.
3. Jeffrey Quill, pers. comm.
4. Tony’s sister-in-law Alicia referred to a point in the war at which he faltered in his faith, but did not enlarge on the circumstances.
5. Constable Maxwell, like Tony, was in St Bede’s House (and for a while had the bed next to Tony’s elder brother Stuart). He went often into the church: “when Tony came in he would go to the Lady Chapel and would always give me a lovely smile. I was rather fond of him." While still a trainee pilot Constable Maxwell returned to Ampleforth and meeting Tony there in pilot officer’s uniform, spoke about hedge-hopping; Tony replied that in a Spitfire it was more a matter of belly-hopping. "I thought then what a charming chap”, said Constable-Maxwell; “it was like looking up to superman...."
6. See The Vivid Air by Alex Revell.
7. Following the conversation to which the Abbot refers in his letter, Fr Barry said later that he had a feeling of the presence of Tony Lovell so strong that he hastened to the Stanbrook chapel to pray. He heard footsteps in the corridor above him as he went, and only later discovered that he had been in a single-storey passageway.
8. There is no guarantee that the newspaper report would have cut any ice with the Court of Inquiry even if the latter had been aware of it. The Service is not usually inclined to accept the evidence of civilians, presumably on the grounds that civilians cannot be relied upon to describe what they have seen.
9. Described as "among the most experienced [investigators] in the world" - Private Eye 3 May 2001.
10. Altitudes from OS Pathfinder 1241 Salisbury (North).
11. Source forgotten, probably Tom Neil.
12. For Tony Lovell’s aerobatic skills, and aptitude for slow-rolling on take-off, see p.50. NB that he cannot have exited his first slow roll at 100ft / 30m as reported by the Court of Inquiry. Had he done so, he would easily have cleared the ridge on which he crashed; he would also have cleared the ramparts of Old Sarum fort, which lay across his course.
(The OS Pathfinder map 1987 shows that the Spitfire would have taken off at about the 80m contour, and hit the crest of the ridge just above the 90m contour; the top of the ramparts beyond is on the 105m line. Distance between take-off and crash, say 1100m.)
What would have helped enquiries a great deal would have been an account of the coroner’s inquest, where Tony’s and the aircraft’s frame and engine logbooks would have had to be produced. Unfortunately the Salisbury coroner’s records have been disposed of, and the inquest itself does not seem to have been reported in the local press.
13. The death of the extremely experienced “Hoof” Proudfoot after rolling a P38 Lightning at low level at a display at Duxford in 1996 could not be explained by the Air Accident Investigation Branch, which tentatively suggested that “the possibility of a temporary restriction to the flying controls (especially the roll control)...... could not be dismissed”. (AAIB Bulletin no. 5/97)
S/Ldr Wally Wallens, ex- 41 Sqdn, experienced something similar with an ASR Spitfire V out of Hawkinge while testing the controls for full free movement as he took off. His stick jammed in full right aileron position: “It was a very close thing. Another second or two from lift-off and I should have been well airborne and would then have rolled helplessly and spectacularly into the ground at high speed”. (Flying Made my Arms Ache, Wallens 1990).
S/Ldr Peter Brown (also ex-41 Sqdn) wondered whether the ailerons of Tony Lovell’s Spitfire XII had been reversed, sending him into the first roll. "If the aileron controls had been reversed, it would fit the facts. While taking off it wouldn't matter. But as you're climbing, the torque of the engine means that you'd drop a wing, and you apply opposite aileron to pick it up. If the controls were crossed it would make it worse. You'd pull back on the stick, and as long as you kept the nose high enough, the aircraft would go into a roll and you could do nothing about it. It could explain why he crashed so close to the runway end." (pers. comm.) However this assumes that Tony's first roll was involuntary, which was probably not the case.
14. The poultry netting was carried on metal stakes. Five pullets were killed.
15. Dr E.J. Trimble of the Air Accident Investigation Branch points out: (a) that the rattling sound heard by one eyewitness is consistent with the sound made when wires are fouled by an aircraft wing; and (b) that an aircraft fouling obstacles with its starboard wing will suffer deceleration of that wing, which will then drop. The AAIB also points out that a starboard wing may stall and drop if a pilot tries to climb and turn to port too violently. Either scenario would be appropriate in the circumstances, but the former seems more likely.
16. John Pollard of the Communications Flight.
17. Tony Lovell's sister-in-law Alicia Montagu remembered being told that his accident had been due to mechanical failure (the Court of Inquiry verdict notwithstanding).
18. It was not totally unknown for straps to part, but it was very rare. The Q-type harness webbing was of such quality that it was not thought necessary to subject it to routine testing. Nonetheless there are known instances of it failing - P/O R.F.T. Doe’s harness broke when he force-landed a Spitfire of 234 Sqdn at Warmwell on 3 January 1941, when he broke his arm and smashed his face against the reflector sight (Men of the Battle of Britain).
19. Civilians knew what to do in these circumstances because Ministry of Information instructional films on the subject were shown in cinemas.