A YORK hospital has marked the incredible events of 60 years ago when a jet plane crashed in its grounds.

The pilot of the Meteor VIII was tragically killed and the aircraft narrowly missed a ward at The Retreat, on Friday, February 29, 1952.

Firemen and RAF personnel recovered the pilot’s body by digging beneath the plane’s nose where it had fallen, just within the hospital’s main gates.

The plane’s engine fell through the roof of the hospital’s social hall and embedded itself in the floor. Two cleaners who were in the room escaped injury.

A member of the hospital staff said at the time that it was “a mercy the machine had not travelled another 20 yards” because if it had it would have landed in a male ward.

“If it had done that it would have gone through it like a knife and done untold damage,” she said.

Wreckage was strewn over a wide area of the grounds.

Eyewitnesses said that before the crash they saw eight aircraft flying over the outskirts of the city.

Suddenly the last plane of the second flight of four “peeled off”, and, according to a report, the tail fell off.

The aircraft spiralled toward the city and crashed in the hospital grounds.

It was the second crash involving a Meteor jet plane in the York area within four days.

Within minutes fire crews, ambulances, police, gas and electricity vans, and servicemen from the nearby Heslington Hall HQ of 64 Group RAF were on the scene, helping to search the wreckage and control the crowds of onlookers.

An Air Ministry spokesman said the plane had been on a training flight from RAF Linton-on-Ouse when it crashed.

A small exhibition, with copies of newspaper cuttings from the time along with photographs of the scene and wreckage, has been created in the reception of The Retreat to mark the tragic episode in the hospital’s history and the anniversary.