´óÏó´«Ã½

Bessingby Park,
Ruislip Manor,
²Ñ¾±»å»å±ô±ð²õ±ð³æ….

Date Spring 1944…….

Ruislip Manor is about a mile away from RAF Northolt which was without question a very active fighter station. Very close to Northolt was the GWR (Great Western Railway) line, close to the railway were factories one of which I know produced tyres for planes, trucks etc. Just up the line near West Ruislip Station was the 4MU, a large storage area for the military. Needless to say having Northolt so close meant that the airfield and surrounding area attracted a great deal of attention from German aircraft — both bomber and fighter aircraft, with daylight and night raids.

Bessingby Park — ‘the ‘park’ as we called it was a large playing field, behind Beverley Road and Whitby Road — early in 1944 half the park was partitioned off with barbed wire and that part of the field had military vehicles of all descriptions parked in it, there must have been several hundred parked there as the area became full. A party of about half a dozen troops were stationed in a caravan near the main entrance to look after the site! Not much happened for what seemed the longest time, children continued to play in the part of the field that was left, and the barbed wire became trodden down in places as cricket and tennis balls were retrieved from the wrong side of the wire. (Few realized it but the military vehicles were parked there in preparation for the invasion of Europe).

A memorable instance is still very clear to me - one Sunday morning I went over the park to play and heard an enemy aircraft going over (even as children you learnt the different aircraft engine sounds. It was an overcast morning with very low cloud cover, suddenly the clouds parted and there was a German bomber going over my head with the bomb doors open. Northolt was the target, a bomb landed just outside one of the hangers. The bomber was shot down over towards Uxbridge. I understand that years after the war when BEA (British European Airways) used the airfield the hanger doors still showed sign of the damage that the bomb caused.

Northolt was also the base for the Polish Squadron (the Polish War Memorial to those brave men who lost their lives stands at the edge of Northolt airfield at the junction of the A40 (Western Avenue) and West End Road).

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.