Hello to all!
I worked in the Physics industry for most of my life but now I am a full-time writer. I occasionally publish books on aviation and/or WWII history. I am researching one now and came back to my home area of Bovingdon. I have some questions for all you experts on this great forum (which I didn't know existed until yesterday)!
I grew up in Chesham, just down the road from Bovingdon a few miles (born in 1960) and have been fanatical about aircraft all my life. I studied Aeronautical Engineering at Queen Mary College (as it was called then), although I would love to have been a pilot, if my eyesight had been better. We moved to Ley Hill (much closer to Bovingdon) in 1968, although I remained completely oblivious to the fact they had actually filmed The Battle of Britain a few months before.
When I was at Ley Hill Primary School, there were persistent rumours of a Spitfire wreck in the woods somewhere near Bovingdon. I put it down to 'tall tales' at the time because I could find no evidence. But recently I found an entry by a woman who grew up around Bovingdon:
BBC - Beds Herts and Bucks - Entertainment - The Glenn Miller mystery
Search for the miss-spelled word 'wooods' and you will find it.
Here is her comment in full, if you can't find it:
carolynn langley
although i was born at the end of the war april 1945. i can remember playing in crashed spitfires and lancasters that were left in the wooods surrounding Bovingdon airdrome, there used to be in the groove cherry trees that grew from an italian plane that crashed there. my aunt was the first anglo american wedding at the church at bourne end.sadly my uncle died last year just before what would have been their 60th wedding anniversary
She is probably referring to the Vickers Valetta that crashed there in 1954, when she talks about a crashed Italian aircraft. However she is correct that cherry trees are abundant in the area and may well have grown through the wreckage or been there and had wreckage strewn around them.
Lancasters and Spitfires were not based at Bovingdon, as far as I know, but her comment resonated like a bell in my head with what I heard at school. One thing I have learned from 20 years of researching books is not to discount any rumour or myth as possibly the truth, no matter how crazy it sounds!
I wonder, could there be any truth to the rumour that a Spitfire crashed there?
I see from another reply here from
chevvron that a 'crash map' existed of the area around Bovingdon. I wonder, does anybody still have a copy of this map or does anybody know chevvron, and could you ask him/her?
I am, unfortunately, unable to contact members directly as I am new here, but I eagerly await any replies. I would love to know anything about any knowledge people have of crashes and wrecks around Bovingdon, except the vegetable carrying Dakota and the Vickers Valetta, which are well documented.