Im sure some of you plane lovers will find this interesting.
I grew up very close to a major RAF base and lived directly on the flight path, in fact we lived in the last house before the runway, landing aircraft were literally only a hundred feet above our house. Growing up so close to a major RAF hub I always had an interest in all aviation from an early age. Our house overlooked 2 huge fields, the top field could be accessed from the lower field by crossing a stone bridge and further up a small metal bridge which always puzzled me as a child because it had a small porthole in it. The story my dad fed me was that it was a door section off of a downed mosquito that had crashed just after the war, being young it never registered that much to me and so i soon forgot about it.
Fast forward 40 odd years and I’ve moved back in spitting distance to where I grew up and the story of the downed Mozzie sprung back in my head…by sheer coincidence about 2 weeks later a post came up on the local FB page about a plane crashing back in the 40s in roughly the same location which was by all accounts a mosquito.
Several older members remember the story and one guy had some old archived photos of the incident.
Obviously I don’t have the same landscape as today but there are a few buildings that are still in existence and its approx where the crossing was, or at least in my head anyway.
Last year whilst out with the dogs I regularly walked past where I thought the door section was but sadly there was no evidence of it. After much searching I gave up and assumed that the farmer had ripped it up and threw it away.
This week whilst out walking the dogs I was stood looking around whilst they took a piss and caught out the corner of my eye a panel buried deep in a small overgrown area.
After assessing the safest way through the undergrowth and the wife moaning that id fall and sting myself on the 4ft high nettles I managed to get to it….low and behold the door section!! Pulled it out from the undergrowth and it’s pretty clear is something from a plane judging by its rivets. On the back side there are lockable turn handles.
Started looking online at some pics of the mosquitoes and it looks like it comes from under the fuselage directly forward of the bomb bay doors.
Got to say it pretty amazing to be (or i hope) to be handling a piece of aviation history from a plane from post
WW2. I intend to head back over and get some better pics and see if there’s any numbers on it but for now some pics…
The section i believe it is is lower left of the yellow prop tip
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