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This information is from the Goole Times dated September 5th, 2013. Story by Mike Marsh.

Recalling the horrors of the wartime night when two bombers collided in the air above Goole 70 years ago.
 
It was apparently going to be a night like so many throughout the years of World War II. As midnight approached in Goole the black-out was fully operative. The lights were out, the streets silent and almost deserted. Members of the Home Guard were on the alert as usual; so were Air Raid personnel, fire-watchers and other emergency services. Most people, however, were asleep.
 
But this was wartime, so in sharp contrast to the tranquility around Goole, nearby Pollington, and numerous other air bases in Yorkshire, were alive with urgent activity. There bomber crews were going through last-minute preparations for another raid on Germany. The target for the night was Munchen-Gladbach.
Some of the bombers were scheduled to join up in formation over Goole. That was an established routine; it had happened countless times before. And the bombers' distant noise from above was as close as the war would come to Goole that night. Or so it seemed. So the late-night minutes ticked by. At midnight, Monday became Tuesday- 31st August 1943. And not long after that, to all intents and purposes, the sky fell in on Goole.
 
The fatal countdown to disaster began as 20 Halifax bombers lumbered into the sky from RAF Snaith, as the Pollington airfield was known. That night they would all return safely. But this was a night of major effort from various squadrons and also scheduled for involvement in the raid were 15 Wellingtons of 466 Squadron based at Leconfield, near Driffield. Records show that Wellington LN292 left the Leconfield runway at 13 minutes after midnight. Wellington HZ531(Merv's aircraft) took off four minutes later. Both bombers had a five-man crew. On a night said to be dark but very clear they were scheduled to turn eastwards over Goole at between 2,000 and 6,000 feet above the town. But approaching 25 minutes past night, at a height of about 5,000 feet, the two bombers collided.
 
Bomber LN292 crashed in flames on the town. The fuselage fell in Carlisle Street starting massive fires. More blazing wreckage struck the top of the Peacock Hotel in East Parade, a few yards away an engine from one of the aircraft smashed through the roof of 47 North Street. The second bomber crashed across the River Ouse at Sandhall. The ten airmen in the two planes perished. On the ground, at the Peacock Hotel, the licencee's son, 12 year old James William Stanley died, and at 47 North Street, Mrs Rose Alice Cook aged 37 was also killed.  This however, was a night when hundreds of Goole residents could count themselves lucky to survive. Some of those survivors were directly involved as fires raged around them. Many were evacuated from their homes because of the threat of explosions.
 
Meanwhile, after the fuselage of Wellington LN292 crashed down between the cinema known as the Tower Theatre and what was then John Robinson's furniture shop an area of Carlisle Street was enveloped in flames which at one stage reached a height of 100ft. As the plane wreckage came down, it struck the front of the Tower. The doors were blown in and flames spread to the entrance. Prompt action by three fire-watchers, Robert Cooper, George Gunnill and Cyril Olsen, prevented fire from reaching the auditorium, and but for them damage to the town's largest cinema would have been more severe.
 
The blaze did spread however, to properties close to the Robinson furniture store which itself was gutted. Adjoining the store, Wardle's garage was severely damaged, but remarkably-and fortuitously for fire-fighters and others dealing with the incident-two 500 gallon petrol tanks did not explode. There was one other fatality-when Mrs Stanley jumped for her life from a window on the top floor of the blazing Peacock Hotel, her legs caught a ledge. As a result she fell awkwardly, only partly landing in the blanket held for her by five soldiers but also on one of the soldiers. He was knocked to the ground and suffered a fractured skull. He died in hospital a few hours later.

Additional comments by his nephew, Gary Vial.

It appears that F/S Mervyn John Smart had some control of his Wellington HZ531 as he managed to guide it away from the towns of Goole and Howden, over the River Ouse and crash into a field. The crash site is 53.732771,-0.872726. He is buried in Harrogate Cemetery along with fellow Australian members of his crew; Bombaimer F/S JB McLachlan; Navigator F/S NH Fuss and Wireless Operator F/S EH Berry. Air Gunner Sgt JT Eccleston is buried in Widnes Cemetery, Lancashire
 
The pilot of the Wellington LN292 which crashed on Goole, Sergeant John Leonard Harwood, aged 29 at the time, a Londoner, was buried at Selby Cemetery.