大象传媒

My flying bomb.
Dennis Hilder 71 years old, For nearly 60 years I have been rather puzzled about one of the last of the (V1) Doodlebugs to make its way over London to my home in Lyndhurst Gardens, Pinner, Middlesex.
No-it-all
At the local Picture house in the News-reels bits we saw how these Doodlebug bomb things fly and how when the engine cut out it dived in quite steeply, So I thought we knew quite a lot about them. They made a lot of noise like a single-cylinder motor bike exhaust gust ticking over with out a silencer on, but about 100 or 200 times louder. They were so loud you could not tell if they were coming at you or even as much as five miles on each side of you. You just knew a Doodlebug was coming and when its engine stopped it was going to diving in and explode somewhere near.
The sound of its engine just stopping as if in mid-beat everyone outside just sort of froze like chickens heads a little to one side locking up listening and waiting trying to spot it coming in, hopping they would have gust enough time to duck behind Something.
Die with my boots on
It was gust to freighting to be in doors, So the hole of my family would run out side snow, rain or shine if we heard one of these things coming all-ways to the same spot so we could quickly duck behind the house wall or the garage wall to avoid its blast. With these things you would hear the one that was going to get you coming, so we wonted see were it was going to land and do a bit of ducking and dodging. It seemed so simple.
Our name was on this one
I've a feeling it was on a Sunday about 1 o'clock when we would be having dinner in the spring of 1945, I think? The clouds were very low and dark We heard a Doodlebug coming. We all run out side Mum and Dad and my sisters to looking for the Doodlebug. We'd done this lots of times before, we stood just outside the back door by the garage doors looking in the direction of London where it would come from, We heard this ones engine cut out that was bad as it had not got to us, you knew it was going to come in somewhere close, and some how you could tell this one was going to come in really close something was different about it.
No were to run
There it was diving out of the low thick cloud straight at us. To me it was to late it was going to hit us we were dead, it was going to hit with in 30 to 40 feet, there was no were we could run sideways out of its way, it was too late to run. But it was gently pulling out of its steep dive on us, It must have made a lot of interesting noises going over us but I was just to frightened to hear a thing, It was going on as if coming in to land and looked as if could have but it got closer and closer gust skimming over houses quite some way off now a quarter of a mile or more away till it hit something and exploded not as noisy as I'd expected. A mushroom like cloud of smoke and dirt shot up into the air.

Un-dead again- After that mother let me go.
Out with my bike, A good friend Michael Helpin from 2 doors away joined me racing as fast as we could go to the explosion. The smoke showed us the way, we know the roads well and the short cuts, there was a road for houses but the war stopped all building there, It was over grown in tall grass and weeds, As we turn onto a bike track the local kids yours for a short cut throw to Addison Way, Northwood, were the bomb had landed.
We find a wing of the Doodlebug in the grass and weeds. The Doodlebug wings are ever so small only about 5 ft long. I'd my eye on that to take home I think I could have rested it on a pedal of my push bike to get it home, but I'm sure somewhere on the way some grown-up would come along and take it away for some reason or other.
We got to the bombsite.
Fire engines (Mr Snell fire chef) and Ambulances were there, I don鈥檛 remember any fires or unpleasant injured people staggering about curved in blood and dirty. (We kids were a bit bomb wise and didn鈥檛 go near the bad bits) Only one house was really shattered, but I could see an outside dug in air-raid shelters it was still whole but knocked about a bit. But one thing stood out I remember, I spotted the most big beautiful full bulging stamp album lying open on the path, blown out by the explosion. The rules of finder's keepers should have come in, I could have had it away but you look at the houses smashed up with no idea if or who had been killed or hurt. A lot of the kids living around here went to my school at Potters Street so id left it there.
A few years later
Not long after the war finished my older sister Ivy married George Fagence from Addison Way, Northwood, he had been in the navy during the WAR.
About 57 years later
Only this year I was talking to George on the phone about our memories of the second world war one of us said something about the doodlebug that had landed on a house on the other side of the road to where George's home was in Addison Way at that time, I must have said id seen a big stamp album on the path out side the house that had been hit .We did not know each other then and he was away from home in the Royal Navy at the time the doodlebug landed so I don't think when we met that we ever talked a lot in detail about the doodlebug landing near it his home. I was very surprised when George said that he had a stamp album that had been stored away in the roof of his home and that there was a good chance that the stamp album I had found was his. I could not see how it was possible for his stamp album to have come out of his roof across the road to where I found it as the doodlebug had come over his home before crashing and exploding in the houses at the other side of the road it would have blown things away from the explosion.
But George filled me in on something I did not know at the time the doodlebug had hit the roof of his family home first and bounced off ripping the roof of his home to pieces and not exploding till it hit the houses over the other side of the road.
Solution to the mystery
At the time back in 1945, I'd no idea the damage around the explosion was anything but from the explosion blowing off and damaging the roofs and windows of the houses around it. So the stamp album could have been in the air blasted up higher and landed were I found it. The doodlebug hitting George's home could have explained how I found one of the wings of the doodlebug so far away from the explosion. It has always puzzled me for the wing from the doodlebug was quite a long way from where the doodlebug had exploded. The doodlebug wing was only about 4 or 5 ft long, which was complete because the wingspan of the doodlebug was only about 10 ft across very small.
It was so puzzling because the wing had only a little damage to its paintwork and looked ok not burnt or dirty, How it got ripped off the body of the doodlebug it didn't seem to have been damage hitting a building at something like 150 or 200 miles per hour and there's only one conclusion I can think of the doodlebug might have violently spun ripping the wing off on hitting the roof of George's home throwing one wing undamaged back the way it had been coming from to where I found it.
I did the right thing
You can imagine how it could have been if I'd picked up that stamp album and years later my sister Ivy brings home George. George them one day finding I'd got his stamp album. A part of me now wish I had picked it up as it may have been George's stamp album and I'd have saved it. In those days I found grown-ups rather odd, I could well imagine them chucking the stamp album as rubbish or burning it. But maybe it really was best to leave it alone for I may have been robbing the dead, For at the time I'd no idea if someone had been killed.
Was this a new way to bomb us?
Iv never heard of a V1 coming out of its dive and more or less gliding in as if to land. It should have been us? It came out of the low cloud it was aimed dead on the garage and driveway up the side of our house exactly were we all expected to escape from a Doodlebug blast.
A few days ago.
A few days ago I find out that in the house the doodlebug hit, A Mrs Brocks and her two children under 5 years old were killed and in a house next door two more people were killed.

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