Dig at German Aircraft crash site.
She crashed on 30th March 1941 after a lengthy effort to evade Tony Lovell DFC, who was flying a Spitfire from 41 Squadron based at Catterick.
4U+GH was on a photo recconisence mission over Manchester, when it’s thought she became lost, and flew off course. She somehow ended up in North Yorkshire when the Spitfires intercepted. The aircraft was chased for quite some time, and some remarkable flying from the German pilot almost got the JU88 to the relitive safty of the North East coastline. Witnesses told that 4U+GH was flying very low through the Yorkshire mountains… so much so, that .303’s from Lovell’s Spitfire where ricoching off the JU88, onto the villages below.
Sadly for the German crew, her fate was sealed against the vastly superior Spit. Lovell’s relentless chase paid dividens, and after peppering the aircraft with one final burst of machine gun fire, the JU88 nose dived into the ground, just south of Middlesbrough. Of the four crewmen on board, only one managed to bail out, but tragically, his chute failed, and he was killed instantly. The other three crewmen were still in the aircraft when she hit the ground! No trace of their bodies were found!
We laid flowers on the site after the dig, and plan to errect a permanent memorial in the near future.
The site was excavated in the 70’s, and most of the large items were removed. We still found quite a lot, although small in size. One of the lads found 2 exploded 7.92’s.
I’ve cleaned my finds up, and mounted the best ones. I’ll post pictures later.
Lee
