大象传媒

(This story shows how quick thinking and a lucky shot saved a horrible conflagration.)

My grandfather was part of the coast watch at St Ives. This is the first coastal town you come to as you go up the coast from Lands End, and this particular event happened approximately June or July 1943.

My father and grandfather were in the bay in a rowing boat, opposite the gasometer (this is now Tate Gallery), rowing out to sea, when they saw a German surveillance plane come over, and they notiiced that it still had a single bomb on it. My grandfather had a rifle on board. He could see from the line the plane was taking it would lead it over the top of the gasometer, so he grabbed the rifle and took a pot-shot at the plane, and by some luck he must have hit the pilot.

At that time my grandfather thought no more about it. The plane flew over the gasometer and flew inland. Between St Ives and Penzance on the opposite coast it is all heathland and farmland. It wasn't until next morning that my grandfather found out that a German plane had crashed between the two coasts, with the pilot dead from a bullet.

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