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Dornier 217 bombs miss Ewell East Station

Our family returned to England from Holland a few months before the outbreak of war on 3rd September 1939.

Because our wireless was out of action we attended next door to hear the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, tell us that the country was at war with Germany. It was probably a weekend, as otherwise I would have been at school.

I became a day boy pupil at Kingswood House School on West Hill, Epsom. It was a private preparatory school for Epsom College public school.

At first I used to bicycle there from home every day. Then later when the Battle of Britain started the school hired an ancient large Rolls Royce Phantom 1 to act as a school car, engaged on a circuitous route picking up us boys from appointed collection points round the town. The largest number of boys that were packed into that old car was twenty two. Our collection point was at the top of "The Green" where the two end roads divide into Longdown Lane and Higher Green.

One day after the Battle of Britain was finished and the skies were cleared of German aircraft, two of us left the car, and looked up at the sound of a low flying aircraft. It was black, with big black and white crosses on it. A Dornier 217.

Dornier DO 217

It flew slowly over us in a northerly direction towards London. Then we saw its bomb doors open and counted five bombs failing out with Ewell East railway station as the target. The bomb aimer could not have been very good as he completely missed, and the bombs fell and exploded in the housing estate beyond.

We ran down the road as fast as we could to the Air Raid Warden based in his ARP hut on the Green, nearly opposite to our house and adjacent to the bridle path to the public park by Alexandra Road. Excitedly we told him what we had seen and asked him what he was going to do about it, call up the Air Force? We were entirely deflated when he replied, quote, "Well it has gone now, so what are you worried about?"

That was a quiet period in the skies over London suburbs. What a Dornier was doing flying at low altitude in broad daylight wandering towards a London surrounded by anti aircraft guns and barrage balloons I cannot think. Perhaps the crew were lost, or drunk!

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