Tragic mysteries: ‘Overexposed’ and the two Sabres

wreckage on the moors

Steve Brown looks at two of the most mysterious of the many plane crashes on the bleak High Peak moors

ON THE HIGH PEAK moors lies the  wreckage of many aircraft which crashed there in the days before the sophisticated navigational aids we all now take for granted  were fitted to aircraft as standard. Many of these date from the Second World War when aircraft returning from raids over Europe with tired and inexperienced aircrew made basic navigational errors and ploughed into the moors. However, given the blackout, radio silence, dodgy altimeters and often poor meteorological data it is hardly surprising that desperate crews tried to descend below the cloud base to establish their position only to crash into the high ground of Derbyshire while believing that they were over the flatlands of Lincolnshire…