 During the trial, Freeborn's counsel, Sir Patrick Hastings, called Malan a bare-faced liar.The court exonerated both pilots, ruling that the case was an unfortunate accident.In 1990, Hough and Richards wrote, 

In 2003, Patrick Bishop wrote that the incident exposed the inadequacies of RAF radar and identification procedures, leading to their being greatly improved by the time of the Battle of Britain, a view echoed in a 2012 publication by Philip Kaplan.