ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

The account below is from a recorded interview with my grandmother, Angie Hibbs in 1992. The incident took place on 27 September 1940, when Flying Officer Percy Burton of No.249 Squadron deliberately rammed a German Messerschmitt 110 after his Hurricane ran out of ammunition. Both aircraft crashed, all three airmen losing their lives.

Angie was working in an office near Hailsham Station that morning:

"One day we heard this commotion going on. The first we knew of it was the siren going and then noise and gunfire.

We rushed outside and saw these two planes biffing at each other, gunfire going and chasing each other and they kept getting lower and lower and then over the station buildings, over some buildings the other side of the road, and came down on the marsh.

We didn’t actually see the collision because the boss pushed us inside because he was afraid we’d be hit by falling bullets, but the buildings would’ve hidden it anyway.

That was about all that happened, but we somehow knew they would crash because they were so low down. We heard later that they’d collided."

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.