Landing accident to HKAAF Spitfire, VN313 (Mk 24) on 3 October 1953. Details here Note the Pierced Steel Planking (PSP) runway. From "Winged Dragon" :
It (Sek Kong) was unusually wet and the grass verge along the narrow runway was very soft. The Spitfires (4) had completed a formation detail and were landing in pairs. The second pair then landed and, when half-way along the runway where there were some some army buildings on the north side, the left-hand one (Spitfire) chanced to put its port wheel onto the soft verge. It veered off and did a leisurely one hundred and eighty degree turn before its undercarriage collapsed and it came to rest with one wingtip buried in the Regimental Sergeant Major's sleeping quarters, spreading bricks across his bed. The nose went into the latrines, occupied at the time by the RSM - which it demolished and where it stuck with its tail in the air shrouded in corrugated iron. The pilot (George Bain) was seen to leave the cockpit only to dash straight back to switch-off the engine which, without the weight of a five-blade propeller was howling its head off.
All went quiet until the barman from the Sergeant's Mess came out and said,
"Can I get you a drink, Sir? " to which George replied,
"Yes, a double arsenic, please!"
VN313 had been service with the HKAAF since March 1952 and never flew again.
