Shawbury - Shawbury

On September 13, 1946 at 12:00 AM, Shawbury - Shawbury experienced a crash involving Vickers 619 Wellington X, operated by Royal Air Force - RAF, with the event recorded near Roscoff Finistère.

The flight was categorized as training and the reported phase was flight at a lake, sea, ocean, river crash site.

6 people were known to be on board, 3 fatalities were recorded, 3 survivors were identified or estimated. This corresponds to an estimated fatality rate of 50.0%.

Crew on board: 6, crew fatalities: 3, passengers on board: 0, passenger fatalities: 0, other fatalities: 0.

The listed crash cause is human factor. The crew was performing a training flight from RAF Shawbury. After flying over the island of Ouessant, heading to Straits of Dover, both engines failed simultaneously. Unable to restart the engines, the captain was forced to reduce his altitude and attempted to ditch the aircraft off Roscoff. On rough sea, the aircraft landed quite hard and broke in two. Three crew members were able to take refuge in a dinghy while three others were drowned when the aircraft sank and was lost. The crew of a merchant ship arrived on the scene about 5 hours later and evacuated the three survivors that were later landed at Plymouth. Crew: F/Lt Franczak, pilot, F/O Ken S. Delbridge, navigator, Sgt Bennett, signaler, Cad Joseph Smith, † Sgt Smith, † Sgt Singh. †

Aircraft reference details include registration NC630.

Geospatial coordinates for this crash are approximately 48.7199°, -3.9842°.