Local History

[Hat]

Fantastic....

well.. fantastic if you know the names of the roads, farms where the trees are.. etc. etc.

This is where I was brought up, and I can so easily visualise all of this happening in relation to the surroundings I know so well...

- a Me110 crashing just pass my mate Marks House, a HE111 billowing smoke and riddled with holes, thundering low over my old primaary school to crash onto the grass of High Salvington just behind... and the German parachutist becoming tangled in a tree just opposite Kingswood Farm on the A24.. . .

A nice little find, there must be others loacl history stories about somewhere on the web.. and if not .. there SHOULD be!

http://www.findonvillage.com/indwar.htm

http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.c...t.x=10&out.y=9

Heinkels over the golf course? Sheesh.. the CHEEK of it!

[Skeps]

When my dad was alive ( he died in 1996 ) he used to tell me about a german plane that was downed in a field close to where he lived......small child robbin off with bits of plane.....there is also a myth goin round that there is a friendly ghost seen on the marsh from a downed pilot ......the marsh bein the river dee which I overlook every mornin lookin outta me bedroom window into north wales

[MA_Moby]

My old man used to blame his flying career on watching a Beaufighter shoot down a Heinkel over his hometown of Ashington in Northumberland.

My mum started off the war in Malta, so she saw plenty of aerial action - including being blown through a door by a bomb and being straffed in the street by 109s. Survived the lot - obviously. Her earliest paintings -she was a keen artist - were of dogfights over Valetta harbour!

I generally find that wherever I go to live I find something is remembered about a crashed bomber or a dogfight or a bombing - especially in smaller villages where often the event was their sole contact with the war beyond rationing and radio.

Norfolk is a great place for it - what with all the former wartime airfields. I once heard an account of how a perfect blue sky on a summers day would cloud over with contrails as bombers assembled for the thousand bomber raids! It's mindblowing to imagine it! One thousand bombers filling the skies over Norwich.

[[GSV]Trig]

Something crashed near Prestwold Hall about 6 miles away from here, cant remember what it was tho, mite have been a 111..

[TeePee]

I'm sat 50 yrds from a building which was used to house German prisoners of war for interrogation. The Germans targetted it in an attempt to stop them from talking but instead bombed the building next door (which was rebuilt in the 50's as a glass and concrete monstrocity which really doesn't fit in) and another building the other side, which is now an NCP car park. The building is now the Russian Embassy.

[Tumble]

half a mile down the road is Hutchinson Square... twas used as an internment camp during the war...

[Zak33]

blimey Hat..to actually know it that closely and precisely is a bit of a shock to the old system, huh?

I keep finding stuff locally.....but its never really close enough to my own thoughts or back yard for it to effect me in that way.

While I was 8 or 9, in the woods where we played, there was a big big crater. We used it for fighting in. The sides were vertical, and to get out of it while your mates were pounding you was the challenge. It was huge.

Later on in life we used it for BMX jumping.

Later still we used it to sit and drink cider.

Once upon a time someone planted a plane in it, very fast and very vertical. There was still sheet metal in the ground, which we cut ourselves on regularly, and blew BMX tyres on, and it was a pain that is was there.

Kids probably still think like that about it.

Someone probably died there

[turkster]

Not so much of that over here unfortunately (or furtunately depending on how you look at it).

There is probably large parts of many of those crashed planes still buried in the ground.

An idea what that plane was Zak?

[Neil Washbrook]

Good find brother - I know Dad rates that web site very highly for local history but never visited it myself.

I certainly remember on the Gallops at High Salvington by our primary school stories of being able to find with a metal detector lines of bullets in the grass.

When the Battle of Britain film came to the local cinema there was a map there of the bombs dropped on our home town. Never seen it since though.

Did not know about any of those crashes or the one at Bramber but did know about the Bunker on Broadwater Green.