大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bethany Howell and Jenny Ashcroft from Dover Grammar School for Girls and has been added to the website on behalf of Colin Copley with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.
During the summer of 1942 I was living at Stonehall near Dover. I heard a Merlin engine running very roughly approaching me from the direction of Dover. The aircraft concerned was a Spitfire that had obviously sustained quite a lot of damage, when the aircraft got close to me the pilot climbed out onto the wing and jumped, as he did so the aircraft went into a steep climb the whole section of the tail plane started to break free of the aircraft. After a couple of seconds the whole section fell away from the main body of the aircraft. By this time the pilot鈥檚 parachute had opened but unfortunately the tail plane caught up with the pilot and ripped through the top of his parachute. At that point I knew he was going to die. The aircraft crashed about half a mile from me. I ran towards the site, met up with a friend on the way and we found the aircraft had crashed in the next field to where we were. The tail plane and the pilot were in the field that we were in. We ran across to the pilot but were well aware there was nothing we could do. At that point some soldiers and farm workers were approaching from the other side of the field and told us to keep away and we watched as they picked up a wattle and pulled the parachute and the pilot onto the wattle and used it as a stretcher to carry him away.

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