BUT the Daily Mirror was a typical tabloid reporting style

  This story was used to coin the title of the page and its associated URL. Below you can see that it could, and perhaps should have been different in the light of the broadsheet report.

  Then I found a respectable broadsheet to see what they said about the incident. Sadly the scan of the image was hard to read and therefore has been transcribed in the next image. The report comes from the Hampshire Telegraph 1st July 1958.

  What makes me wonder is that nothing whatsoever was mentioned in the Communicator Magazine or in the Portsmouth News, the Navy News, the Petersfield Post or common Mercury East Meon/Clanfield folk law, and yet it was a major incident.

  The following was written after the crash in 1958.

  G-AFGZ (the plane's registration/callsign) had no civilian existence before being impressed as a military machine as No BB759. It's war record is not known but that it survived is enough for us to know in these circumstances.

  After the war, it was sold as a going concern into civvy street, but the fact that it had been G-AFGZ seems to have been overlooked, when the Midland Aero Club came to register it, and thus it became G-AMHI.

  Pictures of the same aircraft are shown below, the first G-AMHI. It was in that guise, whilst being operated by the Fairey Flying Club on a flight from Denham Aerodrome to the Isle of Wight on 25 July 1958, that it struck a signal mast at HMS Mercury, the Royal Navy Signals School at Leydene House, East Meon near Petersfield, and crashed into the WRNS living quarters there. The Tiger Moth caught fire and whilst the pilot managed to escape the aeroplane, his passenger, Brian Shersby, was killed.

  Written some many years later.

  The aeroplane is recorded as having been destroyed by fire but - and I doubt that you will be surprised - some thirty plus years later it flew again, re-assuming the war-registration G-AFGZ (now long ago abandoned by them the RAF), and is, I believe, extant today although now sporting a civilian attire instead of its drab wartime colours. See below to the second picture, a tad more gaudy that the first picture also sporting a non-warlike appearance.

Ownership of the crashed aircraft

  HMS Mercury at Leydene was situated in the the lovely Hampshire countryside. On most modern maps of today there is very little indication if any of the existance of HMS Mercury and its new name is 'Leydene Park'. You will be able to see the Sustainability Center which uses the old HMS Mercury 'Sick Bay; as its headquarters and the buildings to the west (the old Senior Rates accommodation) as its guest accommodation.

   So where was the wireless pylon the airplane collided with? Well, pardon my crude analogy but one knows when one has arrived in the centre of Blackpool because of the large tower overwhelming everything, or if you want something a little more sophisticated the Eiffel Tower in the Centre of Paris. On arrival in the centre of H.M.S. Mercury one saw a beautiful clock tower (with working clock) and just beyond that across the garage courtyard, was an enormous 120 foot tall wireless pylon sitting in North Camp East, its feet vying for space with the ancient Dykes (no relation) earth mounds. On this picture above you will see two large wireless masts. This is the static wardroom tank used at one time as the camp's swimming pool for leisure (both genders) and backward swimmers. Any view from it looking north was automatically up hill climbing all the time up to Droxford Road. The mast on the right was nearby the ships company Wren quarters built alongside Droxford Road. See Droxford Road Knicker Patrol.
  Onto this building which stretched along the public highway in an east/west direction and south into the courtyard complex, and accommodated all wrens not accommodated in the main house, the bungalow or in Soberton Towers five miles distant - Soberton Block was not built at this time. Some of these blocks were demolished to make way to build Dreadnought Block, known as the Sparkers Block. Cast your eye on the right of two wireless masts which brought down the aircraft, and subsequently, with the mast over to the left (some further way down Droxford Road at the very end of the New Entry male division accommodations blocks (also built quite literally on the side of this (could be) busy road, was dismantled after the tragedy. The left hand mast was replaced with a much shorter mast serving the ICS Wing live transmitters, an integral build, part of Dreadnought Block. It marked the spot of the steps leading down to the entrance to Mountbatten Block from Droxford Road/North Camp areas.

  Next drop below to alongside the eastern end of Dreadnought Block to see another Wrens mess and further south still the third Wrens mess this time for Chiefs and PO's. Much else in this busy corner were classrooms 44, 45. 46. and 47 used by sparkers for original ICS training shifted to Dreadnought Block, the clock itself shown in the entrance into the courtyard at the bottom. Back up top are areas used by the Wrens as baggage and layapart stores with not a square inch wasted. Mention was made that the 3 Wrens who had left their quarters just in time walked down stairs to the road below. That was an uncovered walkway between the ends of the middle two of 3 Wrens accommodation areas and those of the Dreadnought and Eagle Blocks . All other ships company Wrens lived in Soberton Towers, with all communication trainee Wrens travelling Monday to Friday between the village of Soberton and Mercury. Note the civilian canteen outside classroom 44. We sparkers were honourable members and their toasted teacakes were much better than the NAAFI burnt offerings!

  None of the Mercury personnel naval or civil was injured in the falling disabled aircraft or in the subsequent fire it caused, except for the bravery of young Ordinary Telegraphist John Allen who was left nursing a wound requiring nine stitches. In isolation and in the absence of any corroborating evidence it is clear that young John Allen is the star and anchor man of the story.

  The fire was immediately attended to by the camp's fire fighting and recue crew which were a mixture of ships company and on course male ratings. Restrictions owing to the sensitivity of Mercury's raison d'être were imposed, but as a precaution the civil fire service were called to the scene, as were a mixture of civil police and the Admiralty Constabulary who dealt with the sad death and the injured pilot. Later the camp's emergency call out was highly commended by the CO Captain Brooke and F.O. Portsmouth our OPCON.

P.S. I don't ever recall Mercury having its own ambulance (Allen and the pilot were taken from the scene of the crash to the sick-bay in one) so it had to be either an NHS appliance or a St John's Ambulance or even a near by pusser establishment fortunate to be so well equipped suggesting Mercury did have some civilian support other than police who have to attend every unnatural cause of death although our PMO, an ex surgeon commander could have signed a death certificate.

The map below is the cropped bottom half of the picture just viewed, which shows other parts of South Camp and much of North Camp and has been prepared to help you understand Mercury's build back in 1958. The 'key' to the map is in the table below it.