大象传媒

During the war some attempt was made to grow tomatoes commercially on the Isle of Wight as the pre-war supply from Guernsey was obviously not available. In the school holidays a few of us volunteered to pick these tomatoes and after a day's work on August 16th 1943 we relaxed in the late sunshine at the old farmhouse home of one of our number, distributing ourselves over an unfinished haystack. Someone pointed out a small silver speck extremely high in the sky approaching from the south.We speculated on its nature and suspected in wasn't "one of ours". As we watched another small silver speck came from the north and headed straight for the other one, trailing small white puffs behind it. The first speck promtly exploded in a brilliant orange flash, the second veered round and headed back north. We watched pieces of the first aircraft glinting in the sun as they fell over a period of about five minutes. A local anti-aircrft battery was, within a few days, given congratulations in the press for shooting down an enemy aircraft at 32000 feet. I did not get comfirmation until 1999 that what I saw was correct, and the the plane had been intercepted and shot down. Whether we wanted to impress the enemy that we could shoot a plane down at 32000 feet from the ground, or did not want them to know we could intercept at that height, only the Air Ministry records could tell.

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