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This article was originally written for a paranormal magazine called The Paranormal Journal, it became known as The Underground Files covering ghosts, ufos, cryptozoology, and government conspiracies amongst others. I no longer write for the magazine and it is no longer in existence. The Howden Crash, Sheffield, England, 1997 The local newspaper the Sheffield Star, the morning of Wednesday, March 25, 1997 wrote: “Emergency services from four counties were today involved in a massive operation to solve an X File style air crash riddle in South Yorkshire. “The operation was launched after a suspected air crash and explosion were reported on Peak District moorland near Sheffield. Police treated the reports seriously because callers reporting the incident were so specific – even though air traffic authorities had no official reports of missing aircraft.” Howden Moor, the incident started just before 10:00pm the previous night, when the Ecclesfield Police Station in Sheffield began to receive emergency calls from people living in the area of Bolsterstone, a village isolated and high on the moorland border between Sheffield and the Peak National Park. The first call came in at 10:15pm from two farmers near Bolsterstone, asking the control room staff if any reports had been received of aircraft coming down over the moors. They said they had seen a plane flying in low and disappearing over the highest point on the western horizon known as Featherbed Moss; this was followed by a flash and several plumes of smoke. Further calls were received around this time by both the South Yorkshire Police and Derbyshire Police. Aircraft was in distress and another report saying an aircraft had gone down west of the Midhope Moor area. These reports were collaborated with a report from Strines Forest by gamekeepers who heard a large explosion and reported a “large orange glow” visible on the horizon. By 10:30pm armed with reliable reports, an alarmed police controller had called out 40 police officers and put the county’s Fire and Rescue Service and Ambulance Service on full alert anticipating an accident concerning a light aircraft. What happened next can be followed precisely by the Major Incident Log provided by the South Yorkshire Police, who co-ordinated the search and rescue operation that lasted until 2:00pm the next day. At 10:53pm on March 24th, Chief Inspector Christine Burbeary had taken command of the incident, an initial check with Manchester Airport ascertained that no distress calls had been received or aircraft reported missing. Adding to this nothing had been registered on the airport’s radar, which covers a large segment of the northern Peak District. Staff in both Sheffield and Derbyshire placed urgent calls to both the civilian and military airports that may have had traffic flying above the Peak District. These all came back clear, “it’s not one of ours.” 11:00pm that night West Yorkshire’s Police helicopter had reached the moors near Bolsterstone and making a large search of the area using its Night-Sun searchlight and hi-tech thermal imaging equipment to detect signs of fire or wreckage. It was joined at midnight by RAF Sea King helicopter from RAF Leconfield on the East Coast and use of the Sea King had been authorised by a Flight Lieutenant at RAF Kinloss in Scotland, a base that co-ordinates airsea rescue operations around the coastline of northern Britain. The police log tells of staff at Kinloss running checks on radar but discovering nothing, though later checks provide evidence of a “sonic-boom” coinciding with the initial reports from the Peak District moors. On the ground Fire and Rescue tenders from stations in Tankersley, Penistone, Stocksbridge and Hathersage were hurrying towards the moors, while staff at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital was on standby to receive possible survivors of the crash. The fire crews rendezvoused at the Strines Inn, while others joined the police at the Bar Dyke road junction, where a track leads west on to the moors above the Derwent and Howden Reservoirs. With no actual data of where the crash could have taken place, this left the authorities a 50-mile radius to check. The terrain is wild and high with the rescue services having no choice but to call in the Mountain rescue services as well. At midnight dozens of volunteers from the seven mountain rescue teams in the Peak District were contacted by phone, either disturbed from their beds or told to leave their places of work. Sgt Mike Hope and a civilian, Mike France, the co-ordinator of the Peak District Mountain Rescue Service (PDMRS), made their headquarters at the service’s Hepshaw Farm base on Langsett Moor. The farm was later used as a rendezvous point for the Sea King helicopter, landing there on several occasions during the twelve-hour search to pick up mountain rescue men and equipment to help in the rescue. The MRS Commanders split this large group of personnel into groups, 141 mountain rescue volunteers, each of them assigned sectors of the moors to search on foot and with the help of dog teams. The West Yorkshire helicopter had found no evidence of a crash. Calls continued to come into both police stations in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire. One at 1:00am in the morning from a police Special Constable who had seen what she described as a light aircraft flying very low and on a collision course with the moors, while she was driving near Bolsterstone at 10:00pm. The next morning, when police setup a special phone line for the public to report sightings, a flood of calls came in, these purported sightings of low-flying aircraft and military jets over a wide area from Chesterfield in the south to Thurgoland, the border between West and South Yorkshire. These later reports, Chief Inspector Burbeary said, only went to confirm earlier information that a plane had gone down on the moors. Despite skepticism from her opposite number in the Derbyshire police, who refused to order his officers into a similar search, she decided to upscale the search in the early hours and called in additional mountain rescue teams. “My concern was that we could have about eight people from a crashed aircraft lying on the moor seriously injured. It was exceedingly cold night and we had to find them straightaway.” She said. By 7am on March 25th, the RAF, after consulting with the Civil Aviation Authority, authorised the setting up of what it called a “Dangerous Flying Zone” with a ten-mile radius, centred upon the Howden Reservoir. Air Traffic Control at Manchester was notified and airliners stacking up at high altitude were warned of the flying restrictions below their flight corridors. The Danger zone was established, as later admitted in Parliament, as a routine measure to allow the two helicopters to complete their sweep of the moors without disturbance. As dawn broke, the helicopters did their sweeps, keeping in touch with the Mountain Rescue crews, without finding anything. The Sea King was called back to base at 2:00pm. “We got nothing back from air control, no reports of aircraft failing to return, and eventually, having looked at all the circumstances, the decision was made to call the search off. The conclusion at the end of the search had to be that no aircraft crashed on the moor.” Chief Inspector Burbeary said. Officially, South Yorkshire Police categorised the incident as “unexplained”, though senior officers believe there’s much to disclose over what actually really did happen that day. Today, the police remain open minded about the incident, concluding that perhaps a plane in a drugs drop was used or even it was caused by a “phantom plane” that is said to haunt the Ladybower and Derwent Reservoirs. In due concern this incident has been glossed over by ufologists and thrills seekers looking for wreckage that could be associated with a Roswell type incident. Perhaps closer to the truth is a report of a military flying operation that night, though it’s a highly sensitive idea in the least that no one would lay claim to their own plane in the area giving credence to the “sonic-boom” reported, but allowing a full-scale search to take place. The controversy continues… The Howden Crash, Sheffield, England, 1997 written by Bill Barber |
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