Guest post by local historian Philip Grant
A WW2 German Dornier DO-217-M bomber aircraft. (Image from the internet)
The distance from Wembley to Cambridge is around 50 miles (80 kilometres) as the crow flies. This story links both places. I was contacted by someone who knew the Cambridge half, and asked what I knew about the Wembley part. At the time it was nothing, but after a little research in the local newspaper microfilms at Brent Archives, I can now share a remarkable story with you.
The events in this article took place on the night of 23 February 1944. The Second World War had already been going on for 4½ years, and it would be another fifteen months before the country could celebrate VE Day, the end of the war in Europe. After several years with little or no German bombing, London was in the middle of a “mini-blitz”. Just five nights earlier, eight members of the Whitfield family and seven members of the Metcalfe family had been killed when their semi-detached homes in Birchen Close, Kingsbury, suffered a direct hit from a high explosive bomb. An air raid warden, who’d been blown across the road by the blast, died in hospital two days later.
The first report of the incident in Alperton was this short article in “The Wembley News”:
A brief report from “The Wembley News”, 25 February 1944. (Brent Archives local newspaper microfilms)
The following week’s edition of the newspaper had more time for a full front-page report of what had happened:
“Fireguards Arrest German Airmen”, headline from “The Wembley News”, 3
March 1944.
(Brent Archives local newspaper microfilms)
Fireguards were ordinary local residents, not otherwise serving in the Home Guard or as air raid wardens. After the widespread damage caused by German incendiary (fire) bombs in the “blitz”, regulations were introduced in early 1941 that adults should spend 12 hours a week (often split into four-hour shifts) on night-time fire watching duties. The Wardens in charge of Wembley’s eighty A.R.P. posts had to organise firewatchers for every sector in their area. 25,000 Wembley civilians were given the necessary training, and supplied with bags of sand, galvanised water buckets and stirrup pumps to use in putting out fires.
A WW2 fireguard bucket, stirrup pump and hose. (Source: Imperial War Museum)
The local newspaper report on 3 March included this eyewitness account, from an Alperton man, of what he saw during an air raid on London by over 200 German bombers that night:
‘I was watching the barrage [of anti-aircraft gunfire] when suddenly a plane could be seen caught by about eight searchlights. The guns put up a terrific barrage and got him “boxed”, and then closed in on him. It was obvious that no plane could stay up there long, and all of a sudden there was a flash. They had got him. The next thing I saw was two parachutes sailing down. They were picked up by the searchlights and followed down.’
A WW2 photograph showing searchlights on a bomber, and anti-aircraft
gunfire.
(Image from the internet)
Two firewatchers, Mr W. Hall of 47 Douglas Avenue and Mr F. Harrison of 1 Christchurch Green, were sheltering under the front porch of his house. They had seen a parachute descending, and heard a bump as something hit the roof of number 49. The newspaper report said:
‘A high hedge separates numbers 47 and 49. The airman went one side and the parachute the other. After a discreet wait Messrs Harrison and Hall, who thought it was a land mine, hurried over to investigate.’
47 and 49 Douglas Avenue, Alperton, as it might have been at the time.
(A Google Street View image, painted to restore the
wartime hedge!)
The firewatchers were right to be cautious. “Land mines”, as they were commonly called, were 500kg German bombs dropped by parachute, which drifted through the air until they hit a solid structure, killing indiscriminately. On the same night in September 1940, two such bombs had killed four people, women and young children in flats above shops in Kingsbury Road, and four more (two married couples) in District Road, Sudbury.
The newspaper report continued:
‘After releasing the Nazi from his complicated harness, Mr Hall picked him up. He was thoroughly dazed, helmetless and dressed in a blueish grey uniform. First-aid was rendered, he was given smelling salts and asked if he was alright. He nodded his head, answering in the affirmative.’
‘By this time neighbours began to collect, and the head fireguard of the sector, Mr W. Thornton, disarmed the Nazi by removing his belt and revolver. He offered no resistance and was quite docile. When the young airman had sufficiently recovered, he was taken to the wardens post in Christchurch Green and the police were sent for and he was taken to Wembley Police Station.’
Locations from the incident, marked on a map from 1939.
(Extract from page 30 of the original A to Z Atlas
and Guide to London and the suburbs)
Mrs Hall, the wife of the fireguard at 47 Douglas Avenue, had also spoken to the reporter:
‘The German airman proved to be a youth, aged about 20, fair haired and according to Mrs Hall “a good looking young boy”.’
The young German who landed in Douglas Avenue was lucky. In April 1943, Ronald Francis, a 21-year old RAF airman who’d lived just along the road at 19 Douglas Avenue, was killed with the rest of the 7-man crew of a Lancaster aircraft which crashed in The Netherlands, after being shot down while returning from a bombing mission over Germany.
The newspaper mentioned two German airmen in Wembley’s streets. There were brief details of the other one:
‘The second defeated raider landed in Wembley Park Drive about the same time. He also was captured without any difficulty, and after being taken to a nearby Army unit’s headquarters was handed over to the police.’
But all four crew members of the Dornier bomber had baled out. The airman captured in Wembley Park was described as being around 30 years old, so might have been the pilot. I don’t know where the other two landed, but it may have been earlier, just over the Wembley Borough boundary in Ealing. If you have any information on this, please add a comment below!
The Dornier’s pilot must have thought that his aircraft would crash, after being damaged by anti-aircraft “flak” shells. He locked his plane’s controls so that it stayed level while he and his crewmen baled out. If it had crashed, the plane and its load of 860 incendiary bombs would probably have come down on a built-up area in Kingsbury or Edgware, causing massive damage and potential death or injury to local residents. But the Dornier DO-217-M did not crash. It flew on in a north north-easterly direction, over Hertfordshire and beyond.
Later that night, a lady at 302 Milton Road in Cambridge heard a loud noise behind her house. When she dared to look out, there was a German bomber aircraft with its nose up against her back garden fence!
Two photographs of the Dornier bomber where it came to rest in Cambridge,
February 1944.
(Screenshots from the “German Ghost Bomber” video)
The Dornier bomber had flown over fifty miles, without a pilot, gradually getting lower. Miraculously, it had passed just east of the centre of Cambridge, missing the University’s historic colleges, and the homes in its northern suburb, and made a “wheels-up” landing across a large allotment site. Although it left a trail of unexploded incendiary bombs behind it in the vegetable plots, the remaining fuel in the aircraft’s tanks had not ignited. No one was hurt.
The Cambridge end of this curious incident is told in an excellent 9-minute video film from 2022 by Mark Felton, “German Ghost Bomber – The Mysterious Case of the Cambridge Dornier”, which I will leave you to watch and enjoy!
Thank you, Mark Felton, for the video that led to the enquiry, and which has enabled me to share the Wembley end of this story.
Philip Grant.
[With apologies to Mark Haddon, for borrowing from the title of his
award-winning book “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”. When
the idea flashed into my head, it fitted this story so well that I just had to
use it!]
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