大象传媒

I used to live in Athol Street in Port St Mary, which was outside the restricted zone.

This was Port St Mary promenade from what is now the post office was the start of the barbed wire. You could only reach the prom through a police gate.

The internees used to go down to Happy Valley to sunbathe and I at the age of 6 befriended a little German boy who was with his mother and she shared their sandwich with me and I was shocked to find there was hardly anything on the bread.

We were well fed with herrings and potatoes and most people had allotments with the dig for victory campaign.

I was at a friends house near the prom playing in the back yard when we heard an aircraft that I thought was a Walrus [a sea plane]. They had a distinct engine note which we could easily recognise. However, it turned out to be a Halifax bomber that was in distress. We saw it fall from the sky and hit the ground with a huge explosion. I think all the crew were killed.

On Chapel Beach, there was a plane which crashed on the Carrick Rock. There was a military aircraft that was pulled all the way to Chapel Beach by 30 men.

Off Kallow Point there was a Fleet Air Arm target that was anchored some half-a-mile off shore. Pilots in American Barracudas used it for target practice. They would use smoke bombs and during the night training, they dropped flares to illuminate the target. If there was an onshore wind the flare shoots would drift and land on the golf course. They made a great prize for a 6 year old to capture!

A B-17 Flying Fortress crashed on the Chasms in the fog. A friend of mine lived very nearby and heard the crash. The crew all perished and for months after we as children would go and rummage through wreckage for trophies.

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