to wait until December for spare parts to arrive to get the aircraft into good flying condition. His flight back to RAF Lakenheath, with at intermediate stop at Gibraltar for fuel, was uneventful until he reached the airspace near Lakenheath. As he circled, waiting for other planes in the area to clear the flight path for his landing, his aircraft began to experience engine trouble – possibly due to icing in the engine cowlings due to the frigid winter conditions over Lakenheath – and he was forced to parachute from the aircraft. He landed awkwardly in a sheep farmer's field adjacent the runway, breaking both legs. G-AAGX Hannibal The first flight of the prototype, Hannibal, was on 14 November 1930. The aircraft was named after Hannibal, the Carthaginian military commander. On 8 August 1931, the aircraft was operating a scheduled passenger flight from Croydon to Paris when the port lower engine failed. Flying debris from the failed engine struck the propeller of the port upper engine causing it to vibrate so severely that it had to be shut down. A forced landing was made at Five Oak Green, Kent where the aircraft suffered further damage to a wing and another propeller and the tail was ripped off against a tree stump. There were no injuries amongst the 20 passengers and crew. The aircraft was dismantled and taken to Croydon by road for rebuild. It was lost over the Gulf of Oman on 1 March 1940, with eight aboard, including the First World War ace Group Captain Harold Whistler and the Indian politician Sir A. T. Pannirselvam. An early report that wreckage of the aircraft had been located, turned out to be incorrect;<ref name=Townsville7Mar1940>"Hannibal Disaster: Wreckage Not Found." Townsville Daily Bulletin (Townsville, QLD), 7 March 1940, p. 4.</ref> no trace of the aircraft, the air mail it carried or its occupants has ever been discovered and the cause of its loss remains unknown.Hobby, R. W. "Imperial Airways HP42 'Hannibal' flight CW197". rrhobby.ca, 2010. A wrecked H.P.42 had been loaded or unloaded at Haifa/Palestine between 1932 and 1943, according to photographs found in the National Archive of Israel. An H.P.42 was damaged at the RAF temporary landing ground at Semakh on the Sea of Galilee on 17 November 1932, by strong winds. The fuselage and heavily damaged wings were sent by 1.05m gauge Hedjaz Railway to Haifa, where it was transferred to