Gran ‘nearly dies’ after debris from plane on military exercise hits her home
Sam Courtney-Guy
A grandmother was left ‘traumatised’ after a malfunctioning plane dropped debris onto her house during a military exercise.
Sue Rundle, 71, was walking out of her home in Cornwall on Wednesday afternoon when she heard the sound of slates falling from her roof.
‘I shut the door and came back in and then I heard this almighty crashing upstairs and I actually thought the whole house was falling down.’
She discovered ‘big holes’ had been punched through her bathroom wall and roof, leaving the toilet ‘completely broken’.
‘I looked and investigated and realised what had actually happened – there was this huge lead weight in my bathroom which was the cause of most of the damage and it was extremely heavy.’
The 71-year-old said the accident could have been fatal if she had been in the bathroom or under the path of the falling slates.
Sue Rundle stands in the bathroom of her Cornwall home in Tregaswith, which was damaged after debris fell from a plane during a military exercise. Release date March 28 2025. A homeowner in Tregaswith had a ???terrifying??? experience when debris from a plan fell on her property. Devon and Cornwall Police officers said the property near one end of the Cornwall Airport Newquay runway, had suffered damage around 17:00 GMT on Wednesday.
The debris pierced through Sue’s roof in multiple locations (Picture: SWNS)
‘Because the debris was on the roof and slates were falling off the roof and I’d got old granite slates not roof tiles and they are very heavy,’ she added.
‘If they had hit me on the head the outcome would have come very different.’
The debris was part of a target being towed on a cable by a private aircraft being used in a ‘routine exercise’ with the Royal Navy.
Draken, the US company operating the aircraft, said it was ‘incredibly sorry for this very serious accident’.
CEO Nic Andersen said: ‘As we were releasing the cable out from the winch under the wing, the mechanism to control the release malfunctioned, which meant we could neither wind that back in or release it and discharge it into the sea.
‘In that case, the crew followed the procedures and declared an emergency to seek the nearest airport to divert to.
Sue Rundle's home in Tregaswith near Saint Columb Major which was hit by debris from a military plane flying out of Cornwall Newquay Airport - March 26, 2025 Picture shows the damage to her bathroom Credit: CornwallLive/BPM
Sue said the accident could have been fatal (Picture: BPM)
‘It appears that on the approach to Newquay, the cable and the target were released. That is the debris that really unfortunately fell on the farm and a couple of properties.’
Ms Rundle said she’s used to planes flying over her property, which is around a mile away from one end of the Cornwall Airport Newquay in Tregaswith.
She said: ‘I am devastated, traumatised and I’m in shock. You do not expect something like this to happen. Planes have been going over here for over 26 years since I have been here.
‘I love to see the planes – they were never a problem. But you do not expect a plane to come knowing that it has got a cable dangling, knowing that it is too low and there is questions to be answered because it should have been diverted.’
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