Tiger Moth clips trees while attempting to land in Wales

Earlier in the week, the Daily Mail reported that a pilot walked away unscathed from this crash in Denbighshire in north-east Wales:

As you can see from the picture above and the slideshow on the Daily Mirror, the pilot was lucky to walk away after clipping a tree. Moreover, the mother of field owner Pam Sheldon had been standing in the exact spot it crashed only moments before impact.

Pam, a member of the local Mold Camera Club, had been taking pictures of the Tiger Moth coming into land after the pilot had phoned her in the morning to ask who owned the field next to hers and whether he could land there. She then reported that he did a fly by of the field and then he flew a little lower for a second look. However:

“But when he went to land on his third lap, I could see he was trying to fly between two trees, which I knew was going to be tight, but he couldn’t pull upwards because of some power lines.

“All of a sudden, one of the wings clipped a tree and rolled over and crashed onto my field.”

She also reported that the 40 something year old pilot had been holidaying in the area and was not local to North Wales.

No word on who the pilot was or whether he had visited the field or the area on the ground before the crash but that’s probably the lesson in this unfortunate incident that severely damaged a venerable old aircraft – which will stay in the field until an specialist can come and clear it away. From Pam’s picture below, it looks like its not a total loss but it certainly will keep the pilot grounded for awhile.