clearing Mountain Pass, the other pilots notice that Hussey is no longer in the formation. When he fails to arrive at Las Vegas, he is posted as missing. An extensive search for the yellow-painted aircraft turns up nothing until 16 January 1942, when cowboy Pat Frank, rounding up cattle for the Williams Ranch, discovers the wreckage in the Ivanpah Valley. Apparently, the pilot had followed the wrong road and flew into rising ground of "the cloud-obscured east flank of the rugged Ivanpah Mountains." 29 December 1940 Two Westland Whirlwind twin-engine fighters (P6975 & P6978) of 263 Squadron were in a section of three that took off from RAF Exeter and were transitting from Bovey Tracey towards Princetown, Devon to escort two incoming Catalinas from Darrel's Island, Bermuda, to Milford Haven but then re-tasked to patrol off Start Point. On encountering cloud the leader (F/L WOL Smith) and his No 2 (P/O DM Vine) descended through the cloud to check their position but were killed when they crashed into (believed) Foxtor Mires, a notoriously treacherous area of Dartmoor. The third pilot returned safely to base. Due to the uncertainty in establishing the exact location for the crashes both the pilot's bodies were not found for ten weeks by the MU tasked for the recovery, but the majority of the wreckage of both aircraft was left to settle into the boggy terrain. 31 December A Vickers Wellington IA bomber, N2980, R for Robert, of No. 20 OTU, out of RAF Lossiemouth, suffers starboard engine failure at 8,000 feet in a snow storm while on a training flight over Great Glen, Scotland. Pilot, Squadron Leader Marlwood-Elton orders crew of six trainee navigators and the tail gunner to bail-out, all escaping safely save the gunner whose chute fails to open. Marlwood-Elton and P/O Slatter (also reported as Slater) then notice a body of water and they successfully ditch in the northern basin of Loch Ness near the A82 road, both escaping before the airframe sinks. Discovered by side-scan sonar in 1976, the rare Wellington is raised on 21 September 1985, and restored at Weybridge where she was built. Now on display at the Brooklands Museum, it is one of only two known intact Wellingtons. 1941 1941 Sole Kellett XR-2, 37–378, modified from a Kellett YG-1C autogiro, is destroyed at Bolling Field in ground test by rotor-ground resonance problem – never flew. Funding transferred to