Pietrzac Mustang III FX876 Recovery

The Recovery of North American Mustang III FX876

Left: David King (Chairman) & Alexander King (Current Webmaster)
(King/Brownless)

Following the unearthing of a detailed crash report by Melvin Brownless relating to this crash, including a six figure map reference the current land owner Roger Jiggins was contacted with a view to this aircraft recovery.
Roger knew of the crash and kindly invited us to visit him. He had previously found items relating to the aircraft in one of his fields. One of these was a Carb Temperature gauge instrument.

Carb Temperature Gauge photographed during our first visit to Gould Farm found by Roger.

This he had retained and showed to us on our arrival at the farm , he then kindly pointed out the location where the part had been found and agreed for us to go and survey the field in question.

We were soon to obtain a number of interesting readings in this area including a strong deep reading from our Fisher Gemmini deep seeking detector. Happy with these readings and armed with a licence application we returned to see Roger to request his permission for a full investigation. As we were leaving the field a small item caught our eye on the surface which turned out to be part of a label from the aircraft. Roger was most interested to hear we had located readings of further metal readings buried at the location he had described and was happy to sign our licence application and looked forward to the possibility of a full investigation. The license was duly posted that day.

Pilots Throttle Instructions label from Mustang cockpit.

Details relating to the pilot had been clearly stated in the crash report that he had been thrown from the aircraft some distance away, we were therefor hopeful for a successful out come to our licence application and our attentions then became fully focused on the remembrance of the pilot. A search for the location of his grave through the C.W.G.C. records soon provided the details of his last resting place and a visit to the cemetery to pay our respects and photograph his grave was organised for the following week.

It is always a very moving moment to finally visit the resting place of a fallen airman previously unknown to you, in this particular case after reading the horrific tragic circumstances of his loss, from the detailed crash report.