THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE - The High Salvington Heinkel

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

16th August 1940 — Crowds rushed to see the misfortune of the Heinkel 111 bomber after it had flown over Findon and made a remarkable crash landing at High Salvington. The swastika emblem on the tail fin did not survive the hunger of the souvenir hunters and was soon spirited away.

With thanks to the Battle of Britain Press for supplying the above photograph to me.

THE HIGH SALVINGTON HEINKEL 111 — 16th August 1940

Part published in Sussex Local in February and March 2008

I understand that Friday 16th August 1940 started just like any other typical summer's day in Findon, fairly warm with haze over the English Channel.

That is until around midday when radar stations along the South Coast indicated a menacing display of enemy aircraft beginning to build up on their screens. The threat included around a hundred bombers massing off Cherbourg with their sights on the Portsmouth and Southampton districts.

Fighter Command despatched some twelve Squadrons from 10, 11 and 12 Groups and soon the sky was full of skirmishing aircraft.

Twin-engined Heinkel He 111P aircraft, code G1+FR, was from the 7th Staffel Unit, Kampfgeschwader 55 and based at Villacoublay in France and on a sortie to attack the Great West Aerodrome (Heathrow).

On board was Leutnant Rudolf Theopold who was the pilot. Accompanying him were:-

Unteroffizier Rudolf Hornbostel - observor
Helmut Glaser the wireless operator
31-year old Unteroffzier Albert Weber the flight engineer (killed and later buried in Durrington Cemetery)
24 year old Gefreiter Johannes Moorfeld the gunner (killed and also buried in Durrington Cemetery)

At 16.55 hrs on that day Royal Air Force fighters intercepted them over the Brighton area. Supermarine Spitfire Mk 1 of 602 Squadron, City of Glasgow, based at Westhampnett near Chichester was the first to pick up the Heinkel. The air-raid warning siren went off at about 5 p.m. in Findon.

The Heinkel was picked up again flying over the Worthing Golf Course pursued by Royal Air Force fighters from Blue Section of 602 Squadron. Findon villagers heard the sound in the air grow closer as a dogfight broke out. Firing was heard and the aircraft appeared to be extremely low. The drone of a crippled aircraft right overhead followed more firing and “thud thud”. It was a Friday to be remembered.

The recognisable growl came from the German twin-engined Heinkel 111 passing too low for comfort from the north over Findon Farm and the Horsham Road area. It was riddled with 400 bullets received from a Spitfire. Brian W. Chappell, a schoolboy at the time (and still living in West Sussex), told me that the bomber strafed the houses on the west side of The Oval and seemed to barely clear the roofs of the properties as it skimmed over the old Findon Fire Station. At this point, Brian remembers that his mother told him to draw the curtains.

The Spitfire's pilot, Flight Lieutenanat Robert Finlay Boyd reported:

Sighted He111 approx 1,000 feet above and coming towards us.

I did a climbing turn and delivered a beam attack, followed by Blue 2, who stopped one motor.

Successive attacks were delivered by the Section until E/A (enemy aircraft) crashed in waste ground approx four miles north of Worthing.

Attack at 16.55 hours, landed at 17.45 hours

The Spitfire pilot had shot down his very first enemy aircraft, (a Dornier Do17) on 15th August 1940 (only the day before the Heinkel incident). On the 16th August 1940 he had shot down a Junkers 87 within a minute of taking off, and later in the day shared in the "kill" of our Heinkell 11 with other members of 602 Squadron.

To confuse matters, I have received a different report that the German twin-engined Heinkel 111 that crashed was shot down by Squadron Leader A.R.D. MacDonnell and Pilot Officer P. J. Simpson of No. 64 Squadron based at Kenley, flying Supermarine Spitfires P9554 and L1068 respectively, assisted by Pilot Officer G. E. Goodman from No. 1 Squadron, flying a Hawker Hurricane.

The truth on that day is that the mauled Heinkel limped on, low over Rogers farmland and men working on a hayrick, leaped off as the aircraft appeared to be heading straight for them and then roared overhead. The farm workers held their breath. One can only imagine what went through the pilot's mind but he was experienced enough to struggle with the controls and obtained enough lift to hedge-hop from the north over the downland.

The severely damaged aircraft made a forced landing down the course of Cote Street and was said to be the first enemy bomber to be shot down more or less complete.

After striking the ground, it cut a 400-yard ugly swathe through the prickly gorse, heading straight towards the chalk pit at the top of Cote Street near Honeysuckle Lane. The bomber gradually gouged deeper chunks out of the grassland and scrub before finally coming to rest in a relatively smooth emergency landing in an open field within two or three hundred yards of a Lewis machine gun emplacement.

The crew of the aircraft had not bailed out It was precisely 5.05 p.m.

To set the scene and with a bit of local colour, I must just point out that before the war, Honeysuckle Lane was such a well-known dumping ground for unsightly fly-tippers that it was nicknamed "Dustbin Lane" by the Findonians.

I would also mention that there was a number of searchlight units positioned in the area and these were manned by former local Territorial Army volunteers. At each location there was a sandbagged twin Lewis machine gun emplacement. One such site was on the west side of Cote Street and the Lewis gunner and his assistant jumped swiftly into action. Unfortunately, the assistant was unable to clear one of the barrels quite in time as they swung round. He subsequently sustained an injury to an earlobe as the bullets whizzed straight through the side of his tin helmet !

The gunner kept his gun trained on the German bomber while his colleagues approached the crash site to take the Germans as prisoners. The flight crew had obviously been somewhat shaken by their encounter over the Findon skies and kept holding their hands in the air and shouting...

"Ach Spitfire"

The "all-clear" sounded at 6.45 p.m. Sightseers tore off to Honeysuckle Lane to be the first to salvage a souvenir from the first German warplane to descend upon our area.

Two days later, some 150 sightseers gathered around the German bomber (the scene had grown into a Sunday afternoon's outing by now) and had been roped off and guarded by an armed sentry. The German machine guns had been removed and laid alongside the Heinkel on the ground.

At about 4 p.m. the armed sentry posted on duty, packed up and went home. The crowd started to move forward..... and then literally swarmed upon the German prize and helped themselves to souvenirs. A few adventurous hunters either pulled or pushed switches and released what appeared to be compressed air. The noise frightened everyone and they thought the Heinkel was about to explode.... and they hastily retreated momentarily.

Some had come conveniently prepared with hacksaws and it was not long before the Swastika tail was severed from the aircraft. The Heinkel began to show signs of the damage it had encountered not by the RAF but by the marauding souvenir hunters.

The mid-fuselage gun canopy, having been removed, exposed the foot well, which contained many spent bullet cartridges that were swilling around in an inch of blood. One particular flight crew member must have died an awful death from his horrific injuries.

I have received numerous personal recollections of the notable event of the downing of the Heinkel. How the scribes of ancient times managed to write down years later the sequence of events accurately, I will never know. I have found it very difficult piecing together the crashing of this bomber just over sixty years ago as there are so many conflicting memories. After sixty years, I have become accustomed to expect some discrepancies in the stories I have unearthed.

I have found that this applies to other wartime incidents, the details of which are extremely difficult to reconcile.

Albert Roberts has told me that it was a warm summer day and as a special treat his mother had taken Albert, his brothers and some friends on a No. 1 bus from Worthing. He recalls that in those days the journey was interrupted when the passengers were required to alight at the bottom of the bridge and walk over to the other side to get in their seats again. This was because the bus was fuelled by a gas trailer, and could not cope with carrying passengers up a steep incline!

The children's bus journey ended in Findon Valley at the bottom of Vale Avenue and they made their way up to the Gallops (during the Second World War, this area was put down to corn). They walked through the cornfield to the side of the chalk pit and began their picnic. I will leave the rest of the story to Albert.........

At about midday, formations of bomber planes appeared in the blue sky at a very high altitude, making their way north. Flying towards them were formations of Spitfires.

A big air battle began, and we had to hurriedly make our way to an Anderson Shelter in the garden of a house close to the Gallops. There was a lot of gunfire and spent ammunition rained down on the countryside below.

We then saw the planes being shot down and numerous parachutes appeared in the sky, two of which did not open. One of the planes came down in a field at the top of West Hill. Later, we made our way to that field to look at the bomber which had been shot down and to collect some shrapnel and souvenirs of this exciting ‘day out’!

On our way home, while waiting for the bus back to Worthing, we saw a number of people gathering along the Findon Road to watch the Home Guard, who had rounded up the remnants of the crews which had bailed out, and were marching them down the road.

23rd August 2005

High Salvington Heinkel

I was interested to read your website regarding the Heinkel He111 which crashed in High Salvington on the 16th August 1940. A piece of the Heinkel was recently passed to me from my father who had been given it by my grandmother who received it from my great aunt who lived in Worthing during the war.

I thought that you might be interested in this as you have other pieces of information on the Heinkel on your website so I asked my father for some information as to how the piece came to be in the family.

My great aunt's name was Florence Smith, formerly Schreiner nee Leonard, and she lived in Worthing during the war. Florence was married to a naturalised German-born man named Edwin H C Schreiner (known, for some unknown reason, as Knez). Being ex-German, although naturalised, he had to report to the police each day during the war rather than being interned as non-naturalised Germans were. He worked as a bus driver in the Worthing area. Edwin Schreiner died aged 52 in April 1948.

I understand that one or both of the Schreiners were in the crowd that descended on the wreck of the Heinkel in search of souvenirs.

I have attached a photo of the piece of the Heinkel. As you can see, the date and source of the piece have been etched on it at some point in the past.

Hope that you find this of interest

Regards,

Iain Soars

Here is another recollection of that day......

The blood spattered and holed Heinkel 111 on 16th June 1940 on the downland above Findon.

20th November 2003.

Hello Valerie,

Wartime

WW2 experiences reminded me of seeing the 2-engine German plane that crash-landed on High Salvington in 1940.

I went to see it, I think it was just west of the teashop. Living on Hayling Rise, although I was in the house I heard the machine guns firing.

All I recall of the plane was that it had a large perspex window area in the nose, some of which was spattered with blood.

My memory says that I saw one of the crew lying in the back of a lorry nearby, but your correspondent says two crewmen had bailed out earlier. I wonder if it had a crew of three ?

Later on, one night there was a string of bombs dropped on the east side of Hayling Rise, north of Woodland Avenue, in what was then an open field.

We lived in the "White House" opposite Woodland Ave.....

Peter Trounce,

Peter Trounce, Toronto, Canada.

20th November 2003

.....The plane was not in any way demolished, it was right way up, but wheels were still retracted.

I got there fairly soon, before there were people shooing away spectators, and when I think of it, there might well still have been bombs on board.

It was one of the German oddities in WW2, but they never developed heavy bombers like the Lancaster but only used these smaller 2-engine planes. But then a lot of their ideas were weird. Like the too-clever V2 rockets.

Cheers,

Peter Trounce.

Peter Trounce, Toronto, Canada.

There was one British casualty in the drama of the Heinkel crash. When the aircraft was removed, a dead rabbit was found beneath the wreckage.

A Heinkel 111 from the same squadron (and with the same target of Heathrow), was also shot down later that same day and crashed at Annington Farm in Bramber. Two of the Germans died but the other three parachuted to safety and captivity until the end of hostilities.

The Worthing Herald dated 29th April 2004 gives us another insight into the happenings on that Friday in 1940.

There may still be somebody out there who can resolve a mystery that is puzzling Graham Lelliott, of Sompting.

Graham's grandfather, Eric Kennard, was at Offington Corner, Worthing on that Friday in 1940 and watched the German plane —

"gliding down in a north-westerly direction, then dramatically lose height and disappear over the brow of High Salvington".

Until a few moments earlier, he had been watching an air battle in which a RAF Spitfire had riddled the Heinkel with bullets.

As the German plane vanished over the hill, young Eric and a friend, John Jeffs, leapt on to their bikes and, after scouring the nearby narrow roads and leafy lanes, eventually found the German plane crashed in a field just off Cote Street, High Salvington.

By this time, a policeman and members of the Home Guard were already at the scene and one told Eric there were four men in the crew of the German plane; that two had escaped unhurt, one had been wounded and the other found dead.

A few minutes later, Eric and John watched as the two unhurt Germans were marched off by the Home Guard. There was no sign of the other two crew members, who presumably had already been removed from the scene.

"My grandfather, his friend and others could not resist taking something from the plane as a souvenir"

— recalls Graham Lelliott adding that his grandfather ripped off a piece of the aluminium fuselage while his friend John went home with a piece of leather from one of the aircraft's seats.

"Grandfather wondered what John would use the leather for, but all became apparent when he turned up one day with a strong hand-made leather satchel".

"All these years later, both souvenirs still exist with the original owners and along with them this fascinating story".

Freddie Feest wrote in the same Worthing Herald —

As a young lad, I, too, got on my bike and rode across Worthing and to the top of Salvington Hill to see the first German bomber to be shot down over Worthing.

But this was the day after the Heinkel had crashed and I felt myself lucky to still get a small souvenir of the German bomber because most of what was removable had by this time disappeared.

Miss J. Naish of Pavilion Road in Worthing was also one of the crash witnesses and once again takes up the story first hand for me ... this was written by her many years after the event —

While my mother and I were returning home in the early evening walking south along Honeysuckle Lane, an enormous plane with machine guns blazing flew across the lane about 20 ft. away, knocking the top off a young oak tree in a shower of leaves and twigs. We hurried to a clearing in the gorse bushes and there, on the ground was the huge plane.

It was a Heinkel bomber and it seemed odd to see the swastika on the fuselage in the English countryside. It really brought the war home to me.

As we walked away from the scene, we saw a man who had been collecting a trail of pennies towards a Spitfire Fund. Quick as a flash he told passers-by,

"On my right the Spitfire, on my left, the Heinkel"

Later, we were told there had been four in the crew. One had been killed, one wounded, and two had got out unhurt.

We saw the Heinkel again some days later and someone had cut the swastika out of the tail as a souvenir.

Here are some local memories of wartime (including that of the downed Heinkel) by John Goodwin of nearby Goring by Sea and published in the Worthing Herald dated 13th May 2004 —

The Night I Rang Invasion Alarm

I left Sussex Road School in the autumn of 1939 and joined the Worthing post office as a telegraph messenger boy. There were then 13 messengers and I wore this number on my hat badge.

In those days, few people had telephones and many telegrams were sent to troops billeted in the area. Thus, I was able to pass freely into the regimental headquarters, the 6-inch coastal battery at Grand Avenue and various anti-aircraft sites.

I remember during the Battle of Britain seeing an early morning dog fight over Lancing in which a plane exploded.

I recall cycling home for lunch over Broadwater bridge when I met an army 15 cwt truck on its way to the police station with two shot down German airmen in their grey uniforms sitting in the back.

During the daytime bombing raids, the sky was filled with vapour trails as the air war raged above. Usually, the action was too high up to bother those on the ground, apart from when the noise of the aeroplane engines changed during the attack.

At the end of my shift, I remember cycling up to High Salvington where a German bomber had crashed (Heinkel on 16th August 1940). Along with other boys, I had with me various tools and as we approached the plane, the noise of everyone banging away and trying to detach bits as souvenirs I was not to hear again until I ended up some years later as a signals sergeant in a tinsmiths shop in Baghdad.

........Air raids at night were more of a menace because you saw nothing, but heard the drone and whine of engines without knowing what was happening. Also, we delivered telegrams up to 9 p.m. and with no street lamps it was pretty scary for a 15-year-old messenger.

On one occasion, I cycled up to Steyning Round Hill where a bomber had made an almost perfect landing. This plane was guarded by troops but the sight of nasty blood stains over the perspex canopy has never left me.

One morning, I was on my way to Field Place, which was some sort of army depot, when I saw a parachutist descending. I rode quickly to the nearest sentry, who was unaware of what was happening, although the air raid had gone on for some time, and was thrilled when soldiers started rushing all over the place.

Because of the importance of the telegraph room in the post office (called the instrument room), there was a Home Guard sentry on the first floor. It was the habit of the older messengers to pinch the pillbox hats of the junior staff and ram them onto the point o the sentry's bayonet. Most hats ended up with a slit in them!

When I reached 17,I joined the Post Office Home Guard. At about 3 a.m. the night mail van arrived from Brighton and it was my job to alert the sorting office staff to unlock the gate. Unfortunately, I pressed the invasion alarm, which turned out all those in the guardroom. They were no happy to have their sleep disturbed.

John Goodwin, Goring by Sea, West Sussex

I have also been told that a lady picking blackberries on the High Salvington hillside was a witness to the crash and later recalled how another bystander kindly offered one of the enemy Luftwaffe survivors a cup of milk. Her hospitality was not received well and he thrust her hand aside yelling at her...

"Nein, nein".

A guard was mounted on the crashed Heinkel during the night and he went off duty at 7 a.m. the following day. The relief guard did not arrive until 8 a.m. and this left a whole hour for souvenir hunters to have a field day on the stricken machine. Michael Grand of Findon tells me that he has a piece of the Heinkel still to this day. Others ripped off pieces of the aluminium fuselage and hacked the leather from the aircraft's seats.

The R.A.F. sent an intelligence officer to inspect the crash site to evaluate the Heinkel. This was on the off chance that there was anything new onboard that they might be interested in. The oil, fuel, machine guns, ammunition and other items were retrieved from the plane.

The brief R.A.F. intelligence report concerning this visit stated the following —

Heinkel 111 crashed on the 16-8-40 at Salvington Hill near Worthing. Markings G1+FR (F in white: Spinners White). Engines D.B. 601's. Shot down by fighter action, 303 bullets in rear. No armour was perforated. Six machine guns salved and approximately 50 magazines. Aircraft badly damaged but not disintegrated. Crew of 5, ..2 killed, ..3 POW.

The German aircraft remained in position for a few days and was eventually collected by the Brighton contractor, A. V. Nicholls & Company.   Any crashed/wrecked British or German aircraft from Southern England ended up at No. 49 R.A.F. Faygate near Horsham. From there our Heinkel would have travelled its last journey by rail to be melted down for re-use by our aircraft industry. It seems rather ironical that enemy aircraft aided in the manufacture of much needed British planes.

The three surviving Germans from the Heinkel eventually released from Worthing Hospital and then they had another 3,000 mile or so journey in front of them......they were sent as prisoners of war to........ Canada. They remained there until the end of 1946 before being returned to their own country.

I have discovered that the two airmen who died at the scene, Albert Weber and Johannes Moorfield were interred at the nearby Durrington Cemetery on Wednesday 21st August 1940.   They did not remain in British graves but were to be exhumed some twenty years later.

During the 1960's, Johannes Moorfield was exhumed from section 2, row 16, grave 23.    Albert Weber was also exhumed from section 2, row 16, grave 26.    The remains were then transferred to Cannock Chase German Military Cemetery in Cannock, Staffordshire.   I understand that Johannes Moorfield now lies in Block 4 grave 220 and Albert Weber now lies in block 4 grave 240.

Fancy finding the Heinkel crash site today?   The field in which the Heinkel ended its days is easily accessible. If you park at the car park at the top of Salvington Hill you can walk south west from the car park down a sloping field towards a hedgerow.   It is in this hedgerow that the unfortunate (for some) Heinkel came to a grinding halt on that day when Findon was under attack by enemy aircraft.    If you visit the field, stop for a moment and spare a thought for the inhabitants of our village on that day back in 1940.    The downland view is very much the same as it was then.

At the beginning of 2008, I received an email from Germany...."Info about Rudolf Theopold......Rudolf Theopold, the Pilot of the Heinkel 111 that crashed over Findon died Monday, 28th January 2008. Regards, D.Herrendoerfer."

Continue if you would like to read more about this enemy aircraft crashing in Derek Round's Dilemma.

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This is Findon Village — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.

E-mail: valeriemartin@findonvillage.com