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During WWII, our house in Lincoln Road, Walton, Peterborough was under the landing path of Tiger Moth aeroplanes based at the RAF Peterborough training school. The Tiger Moth was a two-seater, single-engined biplane constructed of wood and fabric. It was used to train new pilots and it was quite normal for aeroplanes to fly over our house every few minutes to continue their descent over the Peter Brotherhood factory and then the main LNER and LMS railway lines between London and the north before landing on the grass aerodrome.
I was walking to school one morning and was aware of the sound of aeroplanes passing overhead but, as this was so commonplace, I didn’t bother to look up. However, I suddenly realised that an engine sound had changed and when I looked up, I saw a completely unfamiliar sight. The Tiger Moth directly overhead had no wings, just a fuselage and tail. There were two large circular objects near it but these remained overhead as the fuselage continued on its wingless, and downward, journey.
Obviously, it did not travel very far before the rapid loss of height took it from my view and I then returned my gaze to the circular objects which, by this time, were no longer directly overhead. I then realised that they were parachutes carrying the two crew members who had been able to abandon the aeroplane when, as I found out later, the wings had folded upwards and then torn off the fuselage.
I stood and watched, as the two parachutes came down not far from where I was standing. One airman descended well inside the factory perimeter fence but the other landed outside and fortunately missed the pointed steel railings of the fence by a few feet.
I was torn between my curiosity to run back to get closer to the crewmember and the sudden realisation that I was going to be late for school. I thought it was wiser to continue to school but had to run rather than walk; even so, I arrived a good five minutes late and was spotted by the late monitor, a child who had the responsibility of making a note of all late-arriving pupils.
Obviously my excited detailing of what I just witnessed carried no weight with the monitor who gave me the mandatory 30 ‘I must not be late for school’ lines to write out before the end of the day.
Although I later told the story of the crashing Tiger Moth to my classmates, I received only a few requests to provide more details of the occurrence but, because I could give no more information, some may not have believed my story.
However, when we met for afternoon classes, one of my classmates, George Goodson, got everyone’s attention when he told us that the Tiger Moth’s fuselage had actually crashed onto the roof of his house. More interestingly, the engine had torn through the roof and finished up in the bath, which his father had only just vacated!
Later, George gave me a small piece of silver-painted wood that was part of the fuselage wreckage left behind by the RAF salvage team that had cleared away the debris.

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