TWO people were killed yesterday when their Second World War aircraft crashed during an air display.
The pilot and navigator of the 50-year-old Mosquito fighter bomber - believed to have been the only one of its kind in the world still flying - were found dead in the cockpit after it plunged into woodland and caught fire near Barton airfield, Salford, Greater Manchester.
Hundreds of spectators at the annual Barton Air Show watched in horror as the plane went down a mile from the airfield.
The bodies were pulled from the burning wreckage by paramedics and flown from the scene by RAF helicopter. Neither victim was named.
No spectators were hurt, police said.
Dense woodland around the wreckage was hampering investigations by the Civil Aviation Authority last night.
Mr Clive Heather, Greater Manchester ambulance operations manager, who was at the airfield when the crash happened, said: ``It was going through an obviously well rehearsed routine. Then it climbed higher and higher towards the edge of the airfield before it spiralled round and round.
``It became quite obvious that it wasn't going to come out of it. We heard the crash and then we saw the smoke.''
Mr Heather and his team, including two paramedic units and an emergency fire service unit, were first at the scene of the crash. ``We saw debris strewn across a potato field and the woodland on fire,'' he said.
Mr Michael Edwards, secretary of the Lancashire Aero Club, which was sponsoring the show, said the De Havilland Mosquito was owned by British Aerospace.
The air show continued after the tragedy, Mr Edwards said, although in a ``more sombre mood than before''.
Mr Mark Drinkwater, 22, who was watching the Mosquito from the back garden of his cottage near the airfield, said: ``We watched it climb to about 2000ft and then it fell back into the woods. By the sound of the crash, you could tell there was going to be nothing left of the plane.''
The crash could mean it is the last time a Mosquito will be seen in the air, although many of them are in static displays at air museums.
Until the jet engine was invented, the Mosquito was the fastest thing in the sky and played a crucial role in Britain's defences during the Second World War.
In 1944, one crossed the Atlantic in six hours 45 minutes, only a little slower than today's Jumbos. The plane has been described as the one of the most versatile military aircraft ever built. It was used as a day-fighter, a night-fighter, a bomber, torpedo-bomber, and an unarmed photographic reconnaissance aircraft.
More than 7000 Mosquitoes were built but because they were made of balsa wood they have worn worse than most with the passage of time.
q Three brothers who booked a flight in a light aircraft escaped injury yesterday after the plane landed on top of a tree.
William, Adrian, and Ian Johnson, and the pilot, found themselves perched 20ft above the ground and had to climb down the tree trunk after a take-off went wrong at Sandown Airport.
A spokesman for the Isle of Wight police said: ``Something went wrong with the take-off and the plane did not manage to clear trees at the end of the runway.''
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