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Throughout the year of the Bristol bombing raids,1941. I was a pupil at Bristol Technical School near Bedminster Bridge. One of my fellow pupils was the son of a local undertaker in Bedminster, which is also where their family lived. Bedminster at that time had been the target of heavy bombing by the Luftwaffe and so my friends’ father decided to remove his family from immediate danger by driving them out to the country each evening as darkness fell. Being an undertaker, I assume that he was issued with extra petrol coupons — petrol was strictly rationed at the time and later on, was not allowed for the ordinary motorist at all.

This family, after sleeping overnight in the safety of the countryside, presumably in their car, would return home to Bristol each morning via the A38 Bridgewater Road. One morning my friend excitedly told me that when they passed the end of the runway at Lulsgate Airfield (now Bristol International Airport, but in those days an RAF Training Airfield), there in full view was a German Junkers 88 bomber aircraft. He guessed that the plane had been on a raid in the North and when crossing the Bristol Channel must have thought it was the English Channel and that they were now over the friendly territory of France!

The story went that, when they landed, the Germans left their plane, and then tried to run back to it when they saw the RAF Security crews heading towards them. They were, of course captured, but what a prize for the Authorities; a fully working bomber with all of its equipment, I don’t think that their Navigating Officer earned his Iron Cross on that flight!

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