TOP-SECRET BRITISH H-BOMBER MISSING

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28980, 22 August 1959, Page 13

TOP-SECRET BRITISH H-BOMBER MISSING

Search For Wreckage Off West Of England

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11.10 p,m.) LONDON, August 21. A lone Shackleton aircraft and three ships this morning combed the seas off the Welsh coast in the hope of finding the wreckage of Britain’s missing top-secret H-bomber. The fdur-engined Victor Mark II jet disappeared with five persons on board shortly after taking off on a training flight yesterday morning I ro, n the MmiStry °f Supply’s aircraft and armament experimental establishment, at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, England. An Air Ministry spokesman said: “Its route would normally take it over the West Country and the Bristol Channel area.”

Later, a tanker reported hearing a large explosion which sent up a 50-foot column of water 10 miles from the Smalls rocks, 40 miles off the west coast of Wales This is where the search is now centred.

Two ships and a trawler also reported seeing flares at various distances near the Scilly Isles, off the south-western tip of England. Planes in the area also reported seeing wreckage.

But the “wreckage” turned out to be a dead whale floating in a pool of oil, and the search in the Scilly Islands area was called off.

An Air Ministry spokesman said: “A whale floating upwards in the sea with the light glinting on it in the gathering darkness might well attract the attention of an aircraft ,and, in the circumstances, be worth a surface investigation.”

Although an Air Ministry spokesman said the search in the Scilly Islands had been called off after the sighting of the dead whale, a naval spokesman in

Portsmouth said at 5 a.m. that naval ships in the area were continuing their search, and that no decision had been taken to recall them.

Among those who are presumed to have died in the crash was Mr Robert Hugh Williams, chief flight test observer for Handley Page —the makers of the bomber —for the last 12 years. The four-jet Handley Page Victor is the latest and biggest of Britain’s V-bombers. While the Mark I is in squadron service, the missing aircraft is one of only two Mark H’s, the latest type, with a greater wingspan.

It is also the world’s first cres-cent-wing bomber. Powered by Rolls-Royce Conway by-pass engines, it is the first aircraft other than “flying test-beds” to have them, and is designed to carry a stand-off bomb which propels itself to the target while the bomber stays many miles away.

One test pilot recently described it as “a bomber with an airliner’s standard of comfort.”