On 29th July 1950 Wing Commander Arthur Mobley lost his life at one of the last air shows at Castle Bromwich Airfield. Tragically, his wife and young son were witnesses to the event.
Arthur Mobley was born in 1913. During the Second World War he served with the No.37 squadron at Feltwell in Norfolk, flying Wellington bombers as a Flight Lieutenant. Having joined the RAF in 1937, he was 26 years old when the war started and rose to the rank of Wing Commander in the RAF.
Flying Wellington Bombers
Mobley flew in the Wellington bomber N2980 which was involved in many bombing sorties including the Heligoland Bight raid in December 1939, when over half the 22 Wellingtons were shot down by the Germans. During 1939 and 1940 the plane took part in 14 bombing raids from Feltwell.
Fortunately, Arthur Mobley was not on board the aircraft’s last flight, a training exercise over Loch Ness in on the last day of December in 1940. The plane developed engine trouble and the crew were forced to bail out. All survived except for the tail gunner whose parachute failed to open. The Wellington crashed into the deep waters of the loch.
Remarkably, in 1976 the Wellington N2980 was discovered by an American underwater team searching for the Loch Ness monster; it was successfully salvaged in 1985 in a state of surprisingly good preservation. When connected to a battery the aircraft’s lights still worked! The Wellington was taken to the Brooklands Museum in Surrey, the site where it had been manufactured 46 years previously and where it can still be seen.
Becoming an RAF Instructor
After the war Arthur Mobley became an RAF flying instructor and it was in this role that he made his final flight.
Castle Bromwich Airfield (now the site of Castle Vale) had been the venue for the Birmingham air shows from 1927. (The 1950s were to see the last of them.) Arthur Mobley, now 36 and a veteran with some 4000 flying hours to his name, had been appointed as deputy chief flying instructor at No.5 Castle Bromwich Reserve Flying School. It was the beginning of the school holidays and his wife Rita and nine-year-old son Terry had come up from their home in Wallingford, Berkshire to see Arthur take part in the flying displays.
Last Flight in a Tiger Moth
It was towards the end of the day. Rita Mobley was sitting in their car watching the final displays with son Terry when her husband came over to say that he had one more flight to make. He was taking up Flying Officer John Deighton of Handsworth, an RAF pilot serving in the Volunteer Reserve for some practice. Deighton liked to keep his hand in.
Four Tiger Moths took off flying in formation with Mobley as leader. The aircraft then broke away to perform a loop, first diving then ascending sharply. Mobley took the controls from Deighton. As the plane started to climb, it stalled and then spun down to the ground, crashing in a nearby field. Young Terry and his mother witnessed the crash, but did not know until afterwards that it was Arthur who had been the pilot.
Arthur’s pupil, John Deighton, remarkably survived, though badly injured with fractured ribs and a fractured leg. He spent six weeks in hospital and later appeared at the inquest on crutches.
Accidental Death Verdict
Deighton testified at the inquest that Mobley had taken over the controls before the breakaway. At the end of the dive, Deighton had blacked-out. When he came to the plane was spinning towards the earth.
Testimony was also given by Squadron Leader Ronald Chalmers, the chief flying instructor of the Flying School. In a very recent medical check Mobley had been pronounced A1 fit. In the light of the steepness of the climb and Deighton’s black-out, he assumed that Mobley too had blacked-out and was then unable to regain control of the aircraft.
In his summing up, Birmingham Coroner Dr W H Davison said that Flight Lieutenant Mobley had been shown to be a skilled and experienced pilot and that it was reasonable to assume that a black-out had been the cause of his fatal crash. The jury recorded a verdict of accidental death.
Acknowledgements: This article has been developed from research by Terrie Knibb and the Castle Bromwich Youth & Community Partnership. For more information about the Castle Bromwich Graveyard Project go to http://castlebromwichgraveyard.co.uk/.
My name is Terry Mobley , son of W/cdr . Arthur Mobley . Thank you William for that story of my father . It came to my attention from my grandson who is a teacher in K L & he has used it in his class .
Regards
Terry Mobley [ 11/11/2016 ]
My brother Terry Mobley has just told me about your article on my father. My mother was pregnant with me at the time of the crash. Thank you so much for sharing this article. Kind regards Patricia Edwards (Mobley)