大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Age Concern, Dorchester on behalf of Mr Jeffery Raymond Jordan and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Jordan fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

1941 was a quieter time, apart from the night raids, but in 1942 we became aware that a lot of the little lanes around us were being widened by two to three feet on each side, and a lot of airfields were starting to be built. There were at least a dozen within 10 miles of us.

On 27 November 1942 our train didn鈥檛 come to take us home from school. It was coming from Lydd and had been attacked by FW190s. The first plane hit the train鈥檚 boiler which exploded and this explosion brought the second one down. My friend saw the dead pilot still strapped to his seat which landed in a field.

On 3 February 1943 I was going to school with four other lads. We had got off the train and were walking along Station Road, Ashford when there was a lot of noise and a FW190 appeared over the station coming towards us. We saw a bomb come up 鈥� it had bounced at the Station. The fins fell opposite us and the bomb went sailing on. It was only 50 ft above our heads. It killed a lady who was cleaning in a chapel nearby but went over the heads of hundreds of school-children. Typhoons were based at Lympne to catch the 鈥渉it and run鈥� raids by FW190s, and they used to fly around in pairs.

In 1943 we started seeing the American B17s 鈥� the Flying Fortresses. I saw one at St Mary鈥檚. It had come down and ended up half over a dyke. We climbed inside and the whole of the bottom of the plane was covered in dozens of cartridge cases. It had been hit in the nose and the crew had stuffed a parachute into the hole to cut the draught. Another one ended up against a pond. It had a Norden Bomb Sight that had broken off and gone into the pond.

In 1942/43 we were still getting night raids and one night we saw a DO217 caught in the searchlights. It flew towards Dover, a lot of flack went up, and it turned round and flew back on a reciprocal course still with the searchlights on it. Then we saw a winking light of a night fighter. The searchlights immediately went out and we saw the tracers as the fighter fired his guns. The DO217 went down in flames and we could see the trail of smoke it was making in the light of its flames. It crashed just outside the railway yard in Ashford and the next morning on my way to school I saw the wreckage. The pilot survived but I think he lost a leg. I don鈥檛 know what happened to the rest of the crew.

In the summer holidays in 1943 a Lancaster came down at night near Hamstreet. It had got badly shot up and was out of fuel and the pilot tried to land it in the dark. It was travelling at between 150 and 160 mph and landed in 150 feet taking half a house and a lot of trees away. It had incendiary bombs on it. All the crew were in the 鈥渞est鈥� position and got out 鈥� all except the pilot who was killed. We found Very cartridges in it and we let them off on VE Day.

Sometime during the winter of 1943, another Flying Fortress (鈥淢y Sugar鈥�) came down on one of the local airfields that, at the time, was not being used. It was terribly badly shot up but the Americans repaired it. They changed all the fuel tanks, engines and propellers and made a lot of repairs on the airframe so that eventually it flew back to its base.

On Thursday 13 April 1944 in the early afternoon, I heard a plane. It was a Flying Fortress coming straight towards us very low. It banked sharply and I could see that there was a fire on the port wing between the two engines. It blew up at Ham Mill (a farm). Father and I got in the car and drove down to see it. There were crowds of people there. We ran along into the field; the fuel tanks were blazing and the wings had disintegrated. We went to the rear turret but there was nobody there. The pilot had been decapitated and thrown out of the plane. Some black American soldiers turned up in jeep with fire extinguishers.

One night during the following weekend we saw a Junkers 188 shot down. There was such a fierce fire that the people living in a nearby farm said that even though their blackout curtains were drawn they could read a newspaper by the light from the flames. The next day we cycled over to see it. We found balloon cable cutters on the tubular nose structure. Parts of the plane were spread over a large area. The main centre section was in the water in a dyke but, following the trail of wreckage, farthest away we found one of the engines 鈥� a BMW 803 鈥� that had just rolled along and come to a stop. We were told that the crew, who were all killed, were wearing steel helmets and body armour.

As we were cycling back we came to the point where the Fortress had crashed. There were no guards there and the field was full of local kids all taking pieces from it. I got an artificial horizon and the gun sight from the rear gunner鈥檚 position, and one young fellow took a radio and the dinghy. However, the police turned up at his home the next day and took them back !

A Liberator came down at Brook Street near Tenterden and I cycled along to see it. There was a great pile of tubes and cables, the wings appeared to be intact but the fuselage had rolled up into a ball and the engines had come off and rolled down the field. There were some Americans guarding it. One of them said they would be 鈥渃omfortable tonight鈥� because they could sleep on the parachutes. They changed their minds when one of them got hold of a parachute and found it was covered in blood.

One Saturday a friend from Hamstreet visited me. On his return home I went half-way with him on my bike. I had just cycled back and gone indoors when there was an explosion. Running out I saw a parachute descending and black smoke rising two fields away. We all ran across to the scene of the crash and came across a wheel and many cannon shells and small pieces. By the road in a tree were parts burning and just across the road a hole where the engine had gone in. My friend had been close to it and he ran home covered in dust and dirt. A narrow escape ! This crash had been the result of a collision between two Spitfires. The other one came down in a wood near Kenardington. A friend saw its descent. As it was crashing the pilot slid his cockpit hood back and was trying to get out. But he was too late; the plane hit the ground and the hood shut, chopping his head off.

In May 1944 the military set up a bomb dump in the woods near Warehorne and we could see the bombs piled up there. These bombs were for the Thunderbolts which were used to escort the bombers. They did not have the range of the Mustangs but came into their own doing ground attack after the invasion.

Also in May 1944 a new type of aircraft turned up flying in formation. They were based at Newchurch 鈥� a local airfield 鈥� about 3 miles from Warehorne. There was much secrecy about them. We thought they looked like a cross between a Spitfire and a Typhoon, so we called them 鈥淪pitoons鈥�! I got on my bike to try and get a look and saw one of them parked by itself just across this field so I went and had a look round it. It was Top Secret but nobody stopped me. Soon we heard these planes were Tempests and were preparing for the invasion. They were being built at Langley near London Airport but there was a strike on at the workshop there. So we had a Tempest Wing (Commanded by Roland Beamont) at Newchurch with one squadron of Spitfire 14s. For a while the Tempest was the only plane that could deal with the German planes. They had a bit of trouble with the Tempest and one day one was chasing two Thunderbolts over the village going flat out. Suddenly there was white and then black smoke and he made a beeline for the airfield. The plane had caught fire but the pilot landed all right.

Another time I saw a most spectacular sight. I was looking out in the direction of Newchurch when a Tempest went into a shallow dive, pulled up into a loop and at the top of the loop, upside down, lowered its under-carriage and then came straight out of the loop in a steep descent and landed.

The Tempests arrived just in time to handle the Flying Bombs (V1s). On 13 June 1944 the first flying bomb came over. We could look out over the marsh and they came over the coast on five routes spread from Hythe to Dungeness, usually all launched at the same time. They were at 1,000 ft and going at 400 mph. At first there was no organised defence, but later there were barrage balloons round London, the fighter belt down to the coast and the guns on the coast. The Royal Observer Corps on sighting a flying bomb would shoot up a rocket that had a parachute and a big flare on it. This enabled fighter pilots to locate and hit flying bombs. I remember chasing one of these parachutes and just as I got up to the place where it had landed, I saw a flying bomb with a fighter chasing after it. The fighter hit it, it went up vertically and then started coming down heading straight for me. For some reason it suddenly veered slightly, missing the marsh where I was standing and went into the hill. A lucky escape !

In May/June 1944, I had pneumonia and about 3 or 4 days after I had recovered from this, a flying bomb came down in the village. It had been hit by a fighter; it hit a tree and blew up. As my brother and I were walking down the hill to see it we saw another flying bomb coming with a Spitfire making a vertical dive on it. We found bits and pieces of the one that had blown up 鈥� the ramjet unit was in a field and we noted that it just had one sparking plug in it. Walking towards the canal we found bits of wing, gyros and air-driven actuators. Altogether we had eight come down in the village but as far as I know no-one was hurt.

On 29 July 1944 at 2130 we were indoors and heard a flying bomb coming. We heard a plane firing at it and my father went to the front door. Its fuel tank was on fire, the engine had stopped and it was gliding directly towards our house. We all got under the stairs and waited for ages (actually seconds); then an explosion. About a mile away the fuel tank had exploded and the warhead fell off. The airframe and engine fell in a pond at Kenardington and the warhead continued for half a mile to land near Ellis Barn Farm where it killed a horse and six cows. The remains were dragged to the side of the main road 鈥� it was the most complete example we had seen. Earlier in the day a Meteor Jet flew over 鈥� the first we had seen. The first squadron was based at Manston. Later we saw a Meteor attacking a flying bomb.

At that time we had a Mustang, which had been in collision with another aircraft, crash in the same field as the Spitfire. Another time a Spitfire collided with a Commando. The pilot - Gordon Raphael - had been in command of Manston Airfield and, prior to being posted to Staff College, he and a friend in their Spitfires, had gone up for one last flight. He dived right through a formation of Commandos hitting one of them and chopping one complete wing off it. It went into a spin, crashed making a a huge hole, and blazed up. I got to it at the same time as the Fire Engine. The Civil Defence were walking about with baker鈥檚 baskets picking up body parts. The Spitfire鈥檚 engine was about half a mile away and bits of it were scattered all over the place.

The sea defences were tubular steel structures and barbed wire. One day we heard that a sea mine had come up at Littlestone and we cycled down to see it. We put our bikes against this defence structure, got through a gap, and walked out to have a look at the mine. We were wandering round it when suddenly it heaved itself out of the sand and started moving. A sailor had been sent from Dover to deal, single-handedly, with it and was using his lorry equipped with a hawser to tow it. The mine wobbled and swayed about and went right into our bikes. We were the only people who had had their bikes destroyed by a sea mine!

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