The Little Baldon air crash occurred on 6 July 1965 when a Handley Page Hastings C1A transport aircraft operated by No.

36 Squadron Royal Air Force, registration TG577, crashed into a field in Little Baldon, near Chiselhampton, Oxfordshire, shortly after taking off from RAF Abingdon.

One eyewitness reported it flying in company with two RAF Armstrong Whitworth AW.660 Argosy heavy transport aircraft.

"[3]Another witness was Lily Pearce of Chiselhampton, who saw the crash from her garden at Marylands Green, about 400 yards (370 m) from the site.

She called her husband Frederick, who in the Second World War had been a member of an RAF crash rescue team.

[4] The Secretary of State for Defence, Denis Healey, expressed deep sympathy on behalf of the House of Commons.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch convened a five-member board of inquiry at the airfield and started examining the wreckage at Little Baldon.

[5] However, within a few days of the accident the investigation found a fractured bolt in the elevator control system (see below) and the Ministry of Defence grounded all 80 operational Hastings.

[7] The grounding brought forward the retirement of this type of aircraft, and its replacement with the Lockheed Hercules within a few years of the accident.

[8] Eyewitnesses had reported the aircraft climbed near-vertically before one wing dropped and it dived vertically into the field.

[8] The inquest jury returned a verdict of accidental death with a statement from the foreman "We trust that every precaution will be taken in the future".

[9] There is a small roll of honour beneath, and an RAF ensign and a standard of the Oxford Branch of the Parachute Regimental Association flank the monument.