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C-47 Dakota crash site, Huntingdon Warren
Buckfastleigh, Devon
Grid ref: SX 6660 6710
Main image: Photo: Derek Harper (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons. The ruined Huntingdon Warren Farm area: field walls and enclosure banks on open moor with a lone bare tree, rolling moorland behind.
On the afternoon of Saturday 13 October 1945, a few months after the war in Europe ended, an American Douglas C-47 Skytrain flew into the hillside at Huntingdon Warren Farm in mist. All seven aboard died. The wreckage was found the next day.
- Aircraft: Douglas C-47A Skytrain (Dakota), serial 42-100640
- Unit: US 9th Air Force, 484th Air Service Group Command
- Date: Saturday 13 October 1945, about 16:10
- Aboard: Seven (three crew, four passengers), all killed
- Crash site: SX 66600 67100
- Memorial cross: SX 66416 66794 (one source)
What happened
It was a ferry flight from Germany bound for RAF Exeter. Exeter could not take the aircraft in the weather and it was told to divert to Weston Zoyland in Somerset. It was given a course of 235 degrees when it should have been about 55, and no one aboard questioned it. It flew into thick mist, hit the hillside and ended partly against a field wall. One source says that afterwards all 484th Air Service Group flights were told to double-check information from ground stations. Sources differ on where the flight started: Erding near Munich, or Villacoublay in France.
What you can see
No wreckage is visible. About 20 m of drystone wall was knocked down and never rebuilt (one source). The farm beside it is a ruin: the house was burned in 1956 and blown up in 1961. The farm's last squatter, known as MooRoaMan, used pieces of the aircraft to decorate his living room, according to the Devon HER. One source, citing Graham Lewis, says bundles of banknotes believed to be counterfeit were found in the wreck.
Memorial
A small metal cross, made by a schoolboy and put up with his father's help in 1985, is fixed to a large boulder south-west of the farm. One snippet mentions a plaque of 1991, which I could not confirm.
Access
Open moor, not one of the three live-firing ranges as far as the sources say.
All military aircraft crash sites in the UK are protected by the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986. It is an offence to dig, move or take anything from one without a licence from the Ministry of Defence, and many are war graves. Look, photograph, leave everything where it is.
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Plate from A Hundred Years on Dartmoor, page 35, 1901“The fogs are most deceptive and very tricky. They come on unexpectedly, and change the whole aspect of the surroundings. They magnify all things ; hills comparatively small appear as high mountains, and a small bird like a snipe looks as big as a pigeon.”
Also on Our DartmoorDrizzlecombe North Row — Bronze Age stone row stretching across open moorland, with weathered granite slabs aligned to ancient rhythms.
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