Royal Navy sailors killed in Culdrose crash

Two Royal Navy sailors were killed in a high-speed crash outside their base in Cornwall, an inquest has heard.

Driver Callum Gilbert, 23, and his passenger Daniel Cox, 24, were travelling at 90mph in a 'hot hatch' Ford Fiesta when Mr Gilbert lost control and it careered into a BMW.

The other driver was badly hurt.

It happened on the A3083 outside the Royal Naval Air Station at Culdrose near Helston where both sailors were based, in December 2022.

Mark Wilson, the BMW driver, told the hearing he was driving home at around 53mph.

He said: "I saw a dark blob, it was a car coming towards me sideways on, which is why it was a dark blob, no headlights."

He said he braced himself because the collision was unavoidable and said he could see the passenger in the Fiesta as it came towards the front of his car.

The inquest heard another driver saw the Fiesta swerving across the 60mph road prior to the crash.

The witness, Charles Williams, told the inquest in Truro: "It was swerving across the road, in its lane but only just.

"It was deliberately going from side to side as if warming up the tyres to get a better grip."

He said the car then accelerated away and "just took off" before it crashed into fellow Culdrose aircraft engineer Mr Wilson's car.

A vehicle examiner said the hot hatch Fiesta could accelerate from 0-60 in six seconds and had "violently gone over the road".

Police said the Fiesta's final recorded speed on an in-car computer was 90.7mph in the seconds before the crash but the sideways impact speed was around 56mph when it struck the BMW in the opposite lane - a combined total speed of 110mph.

After their deaths tributes were paid to the two leading air engineer technicians who served with 820 Naval Air Squadron, maintaining and repairing the squadron's Merlin Mk2 helicopters.

Their commanding officer, Capt Stuart Irwin, said: "These were two bright young aircraft engineers who had already achieved so much and served with distinction."

The senior Cornwall coroner Andrew Cox concluded the deaths were the result of a road traffic collision and said "excess speed" by Mr Gilbert was responsible for the crash.

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