Heston Crashes and Incidents
I've had a system email alert to a post by A30yoyo, including text of a reply he made re the 95th BG B17F but for some reason, it's not here - since deleted? Anyway, he said at that point that the nose art checked out.
Of greater interest personally is the suggestion he also made in the apparently missing post that the "Middlesex Chronicle may have carried the photo of the crashed Ju88, at some time in the '70s. He had previously sent me an email-attached copy of that same photo, which apparently also exists somewhere online (it is NOT in "War Prizes - the Album", BTW, but only in the original 1994 "War Prizes"), and it shows the nose section of the aircraft in worse condition than I remembered it. Unless the nose was damaged during early salvage operation (dragging clear may have already begun), or removed by a salvage team, to recover the centimetric radar a Ju88G-6 with that W/Nr could have been expected to carry, the state of it casts doubt on survival of the pilot and/or other crew members, if any.
If there were in fact casualties, the local story of the pilot calming getting out to use a telephone call box close by, must have been purely apocryphal. It also makes me feel very bad about grubbing around for a bit of souvenir Perspex, if somebody might have lost his life (surely "his" in those days) there.
When time permits (which may not be for a week or three), I'm therefore intending to search both Middlesex Chronicle records from 1945 (that could well have been one of their photos), and CFE records at the National Archives, to look for more information: mission, cause, time, date, casualties.... Fairey Aviation was known to have been studying advanced technology in other aircraft at the time, hands on, looking for features to upgrade the Spearfish - albeit abandoned, due to cessation of healthy orders in that immediate post war period. It's thought to have been the reason a Northrop Black Widow (with its remotely operated barbetted guns) was in much evidence at Heston about that time. Were they also looking at German technology in that late model Ju88, and/or other captured aircraft? If they were not, they would have been on their own, as every other British manufacturer of anything from sockets to rockets was freely pouring over captured techonology in 1945.
Does anybody already have other relevant information, including confirmation that the Chronicle printed the photo in the '70s and, if so, about when?
Is there a weblink to the photo which you can post A30yoyo, to let other readers of this thread have a look - might jog some more memories?