If it had been flying just a hundred feet higher, it would have cleared the brow of the hill. But, in thick cloud, Superfortress RB-29A, one of the American Air Force’s biggest wartime planes, ploughed into the side of Shelf Moor, 2,000ft 610m) up in the Derbyshire Peak District. All 13 crew were killed.

Fifty-five years on, the wreckage, scattered over a quarter of a mile, is still there. It is one of 60 crash sites, most dating back to the 1940s, that have won the Peak District the unenviable reputation of being “an aircraft graveyard”. And it is the unlikely destination for weekend walks that regularly draw dozens of enthusiasts.

“You see that ridge over there?” says Peter Jackson, pointing to a distant hill from one of the highest points over the Snake Pass between Sheffield and Manchester. “See what looks like rocks? That’s part of the tail fin. That’s where we’re going.”

Jackson, a Peak District National Park ranger, has known the Superfortress site for 40 years. He can quote chapter, verse and maintenance manual on the plane, which took part in the atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946.

Shelf Moor is the best preserved and one of the most accessible of the crash sites. But this is no casual Sunday stroll. Jackson is an essential guide as we set off across the peat moors of Bleaklow, the Peaks’ most desolate landscape.

“This is where you get true isolation,” says ranger Brian Jones. “The weather can change very suddenly. I’ve been up here in a white-out, when I couldn’t see more than three feet in front of me.”

The first mile or so is along the Pennine Way, through Devil’s Dike and past Crooked Clough. But we veer off the well-paved track and head uphill across sweeping moorland. The higher we climb on this chilly sunlit morning, the more relentless the biting wind.

Jackson tells tales of the Spitfires, Wellingtons and Chipmunks that came down over the Peak. Over there, he says, is the wreck of a Lancaster that crashed in 1945, a week after a bombing raid on Hitler’s hideaway at Berchtesgaden. Farther north is a BEA Dakota that came down on a 1949 flight into Manchester’s Ringway airport.

And the Superfortress? On November 3, 1948, it was on a routine 25-minute flight from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire to the USAF base at Burtonwood, near Warrington. It was transporting payroll money and mail: an innocuous mission for the type of plane that dropped devastating bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nicknamed “Over-Exposed”, a tribute to its photo-reconnaissance work, RB-29A had a nude blonde pin-up painted on its side. Its crew was due to return to the USA in three days. “Sometimes with these crashes, the pilots may not have appreciated how low they were flying,” Jackson says. “And if they thought they were over flat land rather than the Peak, flying at 2,000 feet wouldn’t have seemed a problem. So many of them were still learning to fly when they couldn’t even drive cars.”

After an hour’s walking and 20 minutes’ scrambling, we reach Higher Shelf Stones, the summit of the hill — so high that, on a clear day, you can see Snowdonia more than 70 miles away. The mass of footprints in the peat testifies to the site’s popularity. But it’s a sobering scene. Steel and aluminium wreckage stretches out in front of us, as though the plane came down last week, not half a century ago.

Wreaths are tied to some of the twisted machinery. Small wooden Remembrance crosses have been planted in the peat. The poppies pinned to them have been bleached colourless by rain and wind. Loose bits of fuselage flap in the buffeting wind.

A stone memorial is a focal point for the commemoration services held here every year, near the anniversary of the crash (this year’s is tomorrow). “You have to remember that people died here,” says Jones.

Both he and Jackson shake their heads about the pillaging that is gradually stripping the site. Souvenir hunters long ago helped themselves to the propeller blades and nose cone.

Isn’t there something morbid about an interest — shared mainly by men — in air crashes? No, says Jackson. “The interest is in the history.” He’s equally pragmatic about what might seem the curious way so much wreckage has been left in place: “It’s no use to anyone.”

And he points to the success of the books his friend Ron Collier, an ex-pilot, has written about the crash sites. They are exhaustively detailed and full of photographs of cheery air crews who never came back.

On this wind-blasted morning, they look very poignant.

Page 2: Need to know: contacts, link and map

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NEED TO KNOW

Peak District National Park rangers will lead free Aircraft Wreck Walks on November 9 and 22. For details call 01629 816327 (www.visitpeakdistrict.com).

Ron Collier’s Dark Peak Aircraft Wrecks vols 1 (with Roni Wilkinson) and 2 are published by Pen & Sword (01226 734555) at £9.95.

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