Vickers Vernon J7143 Fatal Crash at RAF Hinaidi 1926

Attached is a photograph of Vickers Vernon J7143, one of only two Vimy Ambulance aircraft made in the early nineteen-twenties and assigned to 45 Squadron which was based at RAF Hinaidi in the southern suburbs of Baghdad. By the lack of buildings in the photograph, the date would have been about 1923 before the RAF Hinaidi cantonment had been completed (the landing area is in the bottom right hand corner of the photograph). Sadly, the crash of Vernon J7143 on taking off from RAF Hinaidi following the failure of the starboard engine resulted in the deaths of seven men, five of the aircraft’s occupants and two ground staff working in the No 1 Squadron hangar which the Vernon crashed into. Two of the passengers killed were the Station Commander of RAF HQ in Basrah, WW1 ‘ace’ Reginald Brading DFC (and Bar) MiD and the officer commanding No 6 RAF Armoured Car Company, Squadron Leader Eric Pollard MiD, who was also a WW1 veteran. This catastrophe was the worst single accident in the Royal Air Force in terms of number of fatalities since World War One. Attached is a screenshot taken from Steve Buster Johnson’s statistics of burials at the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery, now known as the Ma’Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery, giving details of the deaths and the grave locations. I have also attached a photograph of Plot 3 of the Ma’Asker cemetery with the Brading's grave marked as well as the remains of Flt Lt Reginald Brading’s headstone, one of the 77 headstones that have survived out of the 300 burials at Ma’Asker. The seven bodies were buried side by side in Plot 3, Row K, Graves 2 to 8 inclusive

Vickers Vernon J7143 flying over RAF Hinaidi, Baghdad, 1923

Vickers Vernon J7143 Crash Fatalities, 26 July 1926

Flt/Lt Reginald Brading DFC (+ Bar) Buried at Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery 26 July 1926