View of the school and ‘council housing’ from the Watton Road. Photograph taken in the 1990s.
The following article published in the Nottingham Guardian of the 11th February 1963, caught my eye:
U.S. Pilot Dies Saving Village U.S. fighter pilot Capt. John Welsh (27) was killed yesterday when his Super Sabre F.100 crashed in flames after he safely guided it over a Norfolk village. The plane crashed a few hundred yards short of Great Ellingham’s main council estate, and villagers said last night that had it been only slightly lower it would have ploughed through the village. It crashed in a field at Manor Farm, scattering wreckage over three fields and leaving a trail of flame 100 yards behind it. Two children Mr Gordon Livett [Rivett] of Manor Farm, one of the first on the scene, said: ‘He obviously stayed with it to the last minute. We believe the village had a miraculous escape’ Capt. Welsh, whose wife Jane, and two children, lived near his station at Lakenheath, Suffolk, came from Michigan. Capt. Welsh was en route from Alconbury to Lakenheath when he crashed. The accident was first reported by the pilot of an RAF Hunter who is understood to have followed the Super Sabre down.
There will be many living in the village today who will recall this ‘near miss’ for the village, but a terrible tragedy for the pilot and his family.
Source: 11th February 1963. Nottingham Guardian. Viewed via The British Newspaper Archive
