The crash into the house, corner of Fern Lane/North Hyde Lane, just outside the eastern Heston boundary, was neither the P51 (Grange Farm House - google "Woodasons"), nor the B17 (over the north west boundary, I think).
It was, wait for it......................a Ju88!
It had just happened (too recently for the road to yet be blocked off), as a gaggle of us walked home from Norwood Green School one afternoon - and I managed to "win" a small piece of its nose Perspex. My understanding was that it was a take off accident, so it was clearly not an enemy action incident. Allegedly, the pilot was unharmed and had calmly stepped out to use the phone box which used to stand on that corner, to ask the tower if they happened to have noticed.
Unfortunately though, I'm now unsure of exactly when it was, or even whether it was duriing WWII (in which case, presumably a 1426 Enemy Aircraft Flight machine), or perhaps after they had disbanded (January 1945) but when RAE Farnborough still had examples. Not even sure now what markings it had.
It was definitely a full greenhouse nose JU88 though, not a (fared in nose) fighter variant, let alone one with night fighter radar aerials. I'm also fairly sure the Perspex (added to my shrapnel collection but long since swapped for a newt in a jam jar, or similar!) was from a "beetle's eye" bomb aimer's flat pane, rather than from a curved moulding as used on say JU88S-1's.
Ever since Google arrived, I've been trying to get more info, without any success at all until googling "Fern Lane crash" tonight, instead of "Ju88 Heston". Now at least I know that somebody else knew something about it - I think, BTW, that the damage repair is still visible in Google Street View, around the house's front door area.
So, which aircraft was it? Wikipaedia's article on 1426 Flight only lists two JU88's with the right nose structure - an A-4 and an A-5. There's no information there on the fate of the A-4 but the A-5 (HM509, the "Chivenor Ju88") is said to have been written off following damage in a ground loop, while landing on 19 May 1944. The one I saw didn't really look like a ground loop though, to be honest, unless it just happened to finish up in perfect alignment for a normal, albeit aborted, eastbound Heston take off. I know that departing aircraft usually left the ground more or less over that spot, as I also remember climbing a small tree then on the airfield boundary about there, to watch my first jet (a Vampire) depart. However, the ground loop date could fit timewise - I would have been six, coming on seven, and walking home from school in a group of unescorted kids alright. Paedophiles - pah! We had to cope with Ju88's, not to mention falling V1's - at least two on the Cranford Lane side of the airfield, and several others locally.
Would a six year old have recognised a Ju88? Oh yes! In those days, small aero minded boys, of which I was definitely one, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of allied and axis aircraft. A few years later, I went on to represent 86(F) Sqdn ATC in national aircraft recognition competitions, so there!
Does anybody else have any information on that crash? Is anybody in contact with Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown, former O/C 1426 Flight and still very aviation active (non-flying), I believe - he would probably know the answer.