THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — These Findon Chronicles created by Valerie Martin, contain scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

THE MYSTERY OF THE WISTON SPITFIRE — Monday 10th March 1941

Copyright Valerie Martin 2012

First published in the Sussex Local in March 2012

Wiston is to the north of Findon and is just over the Findon downland as the crow flies...... some 10 minutes away by road.

One Spitfire was lost by the RAF on 10th March 1941 when it crashed at nearby Wiston through somewhat mysterious circumstances and has proved to be another unexplained casualty of wartime.   

Here are the facts:   German activity that day was mostly focused on the English Channel and Portsmouth was the centre of their operation.  The pilot of the Spitfire was 24-year-old Sergeant Benjamin Bingley of 616 Squadron.   Together with two other aircraft he was on a mission to investigate the enemy out at sea in the Channel.   The sky was blue and there was little or no cloud on the coast.  

The first two Spitfires flew out over Worthing at some 21,000 ft. and headed for the open water.   The Section Leader,  Flight Lieutenant Holden suddenly noticed that Ben Bingley, who was flying at No. 3 in the formation, was getting further and further behind the other two Spitfires.   He immediately got on his radio to him but did not get any response.  Seconds passed, something had definitely gone wrong.

Witnesses at the time said that Ben Bingley's Spitfire was seen to go into a steep dive through no reason that they could ascertain and the aircraft had plummeted into the ground at Wiston.    He did not survive the impact.

There were no enemy aircraft within sight so what could have been the reason for the downing of this Spitfire?   The only probable  conclusion to come to at a distance of over half a century is that the pilot suffered from hypoxia — we will never know for absolute certain.   Oxygen starvation was a common cause of unexplained accidents, the Battle of Britain was mostly fought at high altitude and a faulty oxygen supply could mean almost certain death.    Ben Bingley was one of the fighter pilots not lucky enough to recover consciousness in time to save himself.

It may be interesting to emphasise at this point that there was a rather high rate of RAF accidents in the air over Sussex during wartime.  In fact, you may be surprised that there were more losses through misadventures than those through actual combat with the invaders.

Continue to read about The Parsons Farm Junkers 88

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