During the war in 1940/41 a 鈥楤arrage Balloon Site鈥 was established on fields adjacent to the 鈥淏randhall Lane鈥 Estate and above the Brandhall Primary School and the Brandhall Golf Course lower down. (*Brandhall Lane is now called Briennand Rd*).
The Balloon site ran along side the Wolverhampton New Road which is the A4123 and was run by WAAFS and was equipped with all the usual equipment eg. Winch mooring site, accommodation etc.
This site proved to be of great interest to the locals and being 10 years myself it provided some entertainment particularly on windy days as the balloon was quite difficult to handle and the girls would be swinging on mooring 鈥榗orkscrews鈥 bored into the ground.
One day the balloon was high-up at a few hundred feet when suddenly we saw a twin engine transport plane coming from a northerly direction over Oldbury and it hit the balloon cable. The cable was cut and fell on a small parachute onto the nearest council house roof-top and the balloon also lost hydrogen and came down to be retrieved by the WAAFS. Meanwhile the plane continued on course and dropped a piece of bodywork cut off by the cable (possible tail) onto Chestnut Road next to Holly Road No. 65 where I lived and carried on course. A door on the RHS of the plane opened and several young men where leaning out and looking to the front and back to possibly evaluate the damage.
The situation was hopeless as they were too low and too late to use parachutes and losing altitude they flew towards the 鈥楬agley Road West鈥 where they crashed unto the central grassed reservation of the dual carriageway with a loud explosion and a very large blue/black column of smoke and all the crew were killed.
The balloon site was approximately 戮 mile away at Brandhall Lane and we ran to the crash site but by the time we got there the RAF, fire service, ambulance and police had been and gone. The aircraft which came from the north may have come from the 鈥楩RADLEY RAF AIRCREW鈥 training centre near Lichfield but nothing was published in the newspapers at the time in line with the policy of keeping all the information about the airforce secret, due to our woeful supply situation caused by the long term neglect by politicians since the 1918 Armistice.
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