The Heritage Data Division at the National Monuments Record (NMR) are
currently putting together a desk based recording exercise for historic
aircraft crash sites. This will include both terrestrial and maritime crash
sites. Recording will obviously have many similarities to maritime ship
wreck recording but there are some crucial differences. Even before
recording work has started investigations into this area have raised a
number of recording issues that we would be pleased to receive comments on.
These include:
Type of Incident - A recording scheme similar to the maritime manner of loss
is required, including terms such as crash, crash landing, forced landing,
ditched. These could be double indexed with terms relating to the cause of
the accident for example, shot down, exploded ran out of fuel, weather, bird
strike, mechanical failure. This could be a thesaurus where for example shot
down would have narrow terms of shot down air to air, shot down ground to
air and shot down in error. The last example having a non preferred term of
friendly fire.
Nationality - The current maritime list could be used with the addition of a
few landlocked countries.
Departure - The maritime list would not prove suitable as it will include
places which do not have ports and more specific airport names could be
included e.g. Biggin Hill. Should the names of aircraft carriers be recorded
or their location at the time? This is not a hypothetical question as
aircraft have crashed on English soil having flown from a carrier, for
example the Skyraider which crashed on Banner Fell in 1953 had taken off
from the USS Wasp.
Destination - See above, should a plane on a bombing mission have its target
as the destination or the airfield to which it was returning?
Evidence - For the NMRs project this will be mainly documentary evidence,
but where details are given other terms could be used such as circumstantial
evidence, find and sub surface deposit (where remains have been buried). A
new term to cover material on the ground e.g. wreckage is probably needed as
maritime terms are not really appropriate.
Cargo - This is possibly useful for civil planes, but it could be argued
that bombs count as cargo. Would recording this be useful?
Aircraft Type - A thesaurus of aircraft types is in development, so far this
has been largely lead by the work of the Excavation Index after they have
been notified of airplane digs.
Other Identifiers - Should aircraft serial numbers be recorded in other
identifiers or should they go into the text?
Date- This will be date of the crash rather than date of manufacture, unless
it was thought useful to have date of manufacture as well. In many cases
date of manufacture wont be known exactly so only the dates between which
that model was manufactured could be recorded which would not be
particularly useful as a user could get the same result by searching on
aircraft type.
Materials and Construction - These will not be recorded as they are the same
for all aircraft of a particular type.
Height/Depth - Depth is obviously useful in the maritime record but height
could also be useful for aircraft which flew into hillsides in upland areas.
Some sources give this others give references such as crashed 200m north of
the cairn in the summit of...
Collisions - Where two aircraft collide should this be two records, one for
each loss or one record for the incident including details of both planes?
Bare in mind that the two aircraft may not come down on the same spot.
Cross referencing - Where two planes collide and are recorded separately
they could be cross referenced. Also an aircraft can be repaired after a
crash only to be involved in another incident. Individual pilots can also be
involved in more than one crash. Some sources provide this cross reference
information. The records could also be cross referenced to memorials or to
other sites they have crashed onto for example the Heinkel 111 which
crashed onto the settlement site on Lundy.
Permanently Mounted Aircraft - These are either memorials or gate guardians
and included in some of the sources we are looking at. Should we record them
as well and if so what of the above would be useful. Departure and
destination for example probably wouldn't be as the last flight did not lead
to its current location.
Civil Aircraft - Should we record civil aircraft crash sites? These are not
covered by the protection of Military Remains Act and so far little interest
has been shown in this area compared to military aircraft.
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Martin Newman
Heritage Data
National Monuments Record
English Heritage
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