大象传媒

Memories of Aeroplanes

As a 10 year boy living in a small country village in Hertfordshire, some 20 miles North West of London, our world was expanded somewhat by the arrival at Bovingdon airfield of the American 92nd Bomb Group, with their B17s in August 1942. The airfield had recently been completed by John Laing & Son Ltd and was the familar three runway triangle layout. It was a 15 minute bicycle ride from our village of Chipperfield to Bovingdon and when not attending school we spent many of our waking hours at the airfield. In consequence the summer holidays of 1942 were pretty exciting for us.
We had already experienced the fringe of the Battle of Britain and had seen and heard aircraft fighting at contrail height, during the harvest time in September 1940. Occasionally a German aircraft would roar over very low, presumably trying to evade our fighters. Once a Heinkel 111 dumped his bombs in fields nearby. At the time I was standing listening to the local roadman, who was telling me of his exploits in the Boar War !! He pushed me into a nice clean ditch and followed me in, as the aircraft went over and the bombs exploded harmlessly less than a mile away. I have a vivid image of that incident and of the time when a Junkers 88 came over our house at roof top height, so low that the German crosses under the wings seemed touchable.
A number of aircraft made emergency landings in the larger fields on one side of the village. In particular I remember a Tiger Moth, whose student pilot had got lost and an Airspeed Oxford which belly landed and was damaged. I can still recall the smell of the doped fabric and I think most of us ended up with a piece for our souvenir collections.
I lived next door to two brothers, Bob and Jack Harpley who were a little older than me and were both aeroplane mad! Jack said the first aircraft he saw land at Bovingdon was a Lockheed Hudson. I can't have been with him that day, since my firsts were two Catalina鈥檚 landing on runway 35. The best runway for viewing was 04 / 22, the threshold of which was about 50 yards from the verge of the Bovingdon to Chesham road. So this is where we stood, just about on the centreline of the runway. Taking off or landing, the aircraft naturally came over our heads very low and it often seemed, as we watched a B17 charging towards us on take off, that it would go straight through us. I gained a certain fame on one occasion, when I got down behind my bike, in an attempt to ward off an aircraft that seemed reluctant to fly.
Soon after the arrival of the 92nd B.G, their new B17s were swapped with another Group and Bovingdon received the older B17s that had already flown some Ops. It was in these aircraft that the 92nd carried out their first operation. ( This information was gleaned from the history books sometime later, so far as I recall it we were not aware of any swap) My friend Jack wrote down some of the B17s names (and kept the book !!) as we watched or rode our bikes around the dispersals, where we were given gum by the friendly American groundcrews, who asked us funny questions about our sisters!? Some names were: Yankie Doodle, Hitlers Hearse, Johnny Reb, Hells Angels, Ain't Misbehavin and Piccadilly. I should be able to add to this, but the images in my mind are just not clear enough and dear Jack has unfortunately " slipped the surly bonds of earth".
We watched the Group take off on their first raid, straight over the top of us at the end of 22, later we returned to watch them land back and a number had serious damage, which was visible as they came into the circuit. I recall seeing props feathered and one aircraft without a rudder and another with a large round inflated yellow dingy hanging between the port wing and the tail plane. One of the B17s stopped near us, just off the end of the runway and it was obvious that it had been badly shot up, particularly around the tail. The gunner鈥檚 position had been ripped to pieces and medics came to extract the gunner and other wounded crew members. Many years later I read that the gunner was mortally wounded and that the aircraft was piloted by a Captain Frank Ward.
Much later I discovered that the 92nd B.G.only flew four serious Ops from Bovingdon and that in January 1943 they transferred to Alconbury.
Bovingdon was then used as a bomber crew training station, where new aircrew from the U.S.received their " theatre indoctrination ". Also I understand that the Air Technical Section on the station played a major role in developing various aircraft to improve their performance for European conditions. As village boys at the time we were not privy to these goings on. But we did see a lot of different aeroplanes at or around the airfield, the list reads: B17s, Liberators, Lightings, Mustangs, Thunderbolts, Black Widows, Mitchells, Bostons, Marauders, Dakotas, Commandos and Skymasters. Later, shortly after the war we also saw Connies, Super DC3s and B29s. What a snip it was to see Superfort!! .
One clear frosty winters day we were sledging in a local dell, when a large formation of B17s came over, coming back from a raid. One aircraft was trailing smoke from one engine and it fell out of the formation. We saw a number of parachutes leave the aircraft, which then descended in a level attitude to disappear over the horizon, to eventually crash some miles away.

My house was just about underneath the downwind leg for Bovingdon airfield's runway 22, at least for the larger aircraft such as the B17 and throughout the war and afterwards the air activity over our village was quite amazing. De Havilland's Leavesden and Hatfield airfields were not far away and neither was Radlett, where Handley Page was building Halifax's. So a great deal of time was spent looking skyward at aeroplanes and the images of different incidents are still extremely clear. There were times however when we boys were more interested in other activities, such as football and one Saturday afternoon our attention was taken away from the match, by a loud bang almost above us. We looked up to see that a B17 and a Dakota had collided, the B17s port wing had sliced off the complete tail unit of the Dakota. For a moment the Dakota hung in the air, before starting down and its tail unit began slowly fluttering earthwards like a falling leaf. The B17 flew on straight and level for a few seconds, before pitching down in a vertical dive. I can still remember the plan view in silhouette against the sky, with part of the port wing missing. As both aircraft were at about circuit height, there was obviously no time for anyone to get out. The aircraft ended up about half a mile apart, the B17 burned, but the Dakota did'nt. What a sad occasion.................
We also witnessed the large Armada of Stirlings, Halifaxs and Dakotas, all pulling gliders on their way to Arnhem, although of course we were not aware of this at time. I have checked in recent years about their routing and basically there were two large groups that left England, one of which went just to the north of London, which was the group we saw fly over our village. What a tremenous sight and noise, from a formation that stretched for many miles.
Late on in the war on one Sunday evening, we were having our tea, when we heard a fantastic noise of screaming aircraft engines, someone said " Under the table " and we dived under it expecting the worst. Fortunately there was a just a distant crump and all was quiet again. We soon discovered what had happened. Apparently a U.S. Liberator with no crew on board had crashed close by in the next village. (Sarratt, Herts.) It had crashed in a level attitude in a field behind a row of 20 houses and fortunately for the inhabitants, its path was parallel to the houses ,although very close to their back fences!! In consequence as it slide along breaking to pieces, many bits were thrown into peoples back gardens and I remember when we went to have a look, seeing a machine gun sticking out of somebody's roof. We were told later that the crew had jumped from it over East Anglia and had expected it to fly to its destruction in the North Sea.....Oh Well!
I was 12 when the V1 Doodle Bugs were used against us and occasionally they over flew London and reached our village. When we heard their strange engine noise it was pretty scarey! But more so when it stopped!! I saw two that I will not forget, one that was extremely low, going in and out of low grey stratus cloud. The other was about 1000ft? in a clear sky. Thankfully both passed over us before the engine stopped as it pitched down. One V1 did land at the other end of the village, between Chipperfield and Kings Langley. It left a crater in the field when it exploded. This may have "disturbed the peace" and upset a few animals, but I don't think any people were hurt. We collected a few bits of jagged German metal from the site for our collections. ( I wonder what happened to all that stuff? )
My school class was using the village hall for lessons, as the school itself was too small to accommodate the numbers attending, due to evacuee children from London being housed in the village. I was an 'Air raid monitor' together with another boy and we stood outside the hall when there was an alert, whilst the class continued with the lesson. The idea was that when we heard or saw a V1, we would run in and everyone would get under their desks. The only occasion that any activity took place, was one morning when the siren had gone and the teacher had sent the two of us outside. We heard the V1s engine and almost immediately it stopped!! I rushed into the hall and as I opened my mouth to shout a warning, there was a rather loud explosion as it landed about a mile away. ( I seem to have been missing the boat ever since! )

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