How the crash of an RAF Whitley bomber shattered the peace of a Tredegar farm

Almost 75 years ago noise and metal rained from the sky when an RAF aircraft, laden with bombs, crashed into a nearby farm in an incident which led to the death of the bomber’s pilot.

A piece of quarried stone, unveiled this week, now marks that night in November 1940 when RAF Whitley T4232 came crashing down as it flew blindly in the foul weather of a winter’s night.

The aircraft was part of a large raid involving 77 bombers which took off on 12th November 1940 to target the U-boat base at Lorient in southern France.

Hours later it fell from the sky on to the hills of Blaenau Gwent, killing one of its crew. How had this happened?

Bomber Command in 1940 was a very different force to the one that would launch thousand bomber raids later in the war.

Finding a target, especially at night or in bad weather was a problem. Later in the war, sophisticated navigation aids using radio waves were developed.

In 1940 there were no accurate means of directing the bombers to distant targets.

Navigators relied on dead reckoning (calculation) and that standby of mariners and airmen, the sextant. The navigator could only use this if the sky was clear enough to get a reading from the stars, and even then the pilot had to be able to fly straight and level for long enough.

This was not something that could be done while dodging flak or evading enemy fighters.

Aside from this, the navigator gave his pilot a course on take-off and then the crew simply looked out for landmarks if the sky was clear. Winds, unpredicted by the then unreliable weather forecasts, could blow the bomber off course.

Due to bad weather on the night of the raid, only 19 aircraft of the 77 actually bombed the target.

As it returned to the UK, the crew of T4232 had become lost. In the total darkness of a winter night in foul weather they believed they were near the French coast when in fact they had seen Bryn Bach pond.

The aircraft they flew in that night would soon be replaced by the more powerful Halifax and Lancaster bombers, but in 1940, less-capable types like the Whitley were all the RAF had.

The Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley bomber carried a crew of five in an all-metal fuselage. With power-operated gun turrets in the tail and nose of the aircraft, it was considered very capable when it entered service in 1937.

By 1940, its limitations had become clear. With a ceiling of 25,000 feet and its top speed of only 245mph, the crews had an uncomfortable time on missions.

There was no heating in the aircraft and the crew had to wear layers of woollen clothes, overalls and cumbersome boots. The cold caused equipment to fail - wings iced up, guns and instruments froze solid.

The weather that night was foggy and misty with freezing ice. These conditions were the worst possible combination for the Whitley. Ice would gather on its large wings making the aircraft harder to control and the extra weight would cause it to lose height.

And so it was that night. At around 2.00am, the bomber, flying blind and thinking they were over the French coast, struck the highest point of Rhymney Hill near Tredegar.

The bomber clipped the peak, known as the 'armchair', tearing the plane's undercarriage away. The stricken Whitley plunged down before crashing near Pen Bryn Oer farm, near to where Parc Bryn Bach is today.

Miraculously, all the crew were alive when the bomber came to a halt. However their ordeal was far from over. The pilot, Sgt Peter Dickens Goldsmith, was unconscious. The clothes which protected the crew from the cold also made leaving the aircraft in a hurry all the more difficult.

The crew had to escape from a narrow metal fuselage wearing several layers of thick clothing in almost total darkness. The plane's metal ribs, smashed by the impact of the crash would have jutted across exit routes.

Three others of the crew were badly injured. Fuel from the smashed plane soon ignited and ammunition started to explode. Seven bombs remained in the aircraft's bomb-bay.

Amongst the explosions, twisted metal and fire, one crew member, who although injured, was able to act. As bullets from the bomber's machine guns exploded and shrapnel began to fly, Wireless Operator and Air Gunner, Sgt George Christie hauled each of his comrades from the stricken plane.

The exhausted Sergeant was then greeted by the sight of the farmer Mr Raymond Rees Hawthorne, brandishing a shotgun at what he thought were Germans.

Not knowing where the aircraft had come from, Mr Hawthorne had marched out in to the night accompanied by his son and his gun to confront the invaders.

Happily, it was quickly established that the crew were friendly. Mr Hawthorne took them into the house to recover.

Here they told how not only they thought they were over France, but that heavy icing had caused the plane to lose height and crash.

Sgt Dickens Goldsmith was taken to Rhymney’s Redwood Hospital by Mr Hawthorne’s son. His injuries, however, proved to be fatal and he died some days later.

A detachment of local Home Guards came to guard the wreckage until a team from RAF St Athan arrived to assess the damage. The pieces of the Whitley were taken away on a horse and cart owned by local furniture removal man Mr Williams.

The team from St Athan then used the front room of Pen Bryn Oer farm as their headquarters.

The Home Guards keeping watch over the plane were tasked with detonating its bombs, which caused, it was said, windows to shatter in Princetown and Tafarnaubach.

Quiet then returned to this corner of Blaenau Gwent; and now in the peace of Parc Bryn Bach, the inscription on the memorial can be read and the dead remembered: "On the night of November 13th 1940, RAF Whitley bomber ZA VT4232 of 10 Squadron returning from attack on German U-boat pens in Western France, came down at Pen Bryn Oer Farm having mistaken Bryn Bach pond for open sea. Although all five crew survived the impact, Sgt Pilot Peter Dickens Goldsmith would later die at Rhymney Cottage Hospital."

Acknowledgements: Wayne Morris, Blaenau Gwent Heritage Forum