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By William Thurley

Close Encounter With A Messerschmitt 109

It was a bright summer afternoon as we made our way home from the Knoll School. As our small group noisily crossed the Old Shoreham Road heading for Olive Road, which is a fairly steep hill leading down to Portland Road, a sudden burst of aircraft machine-gun fire made us stop and look up. A lone Spitfire was engaged in target practice; firing at a long canvas windsock which was being towed by a Lysander from Shoreham. The target plane and fighter flew across our field of vision and vanished from our sight flying toward Brighton. We heard several more bursts of fire from the lone Spitfire and then they were gone. We continued on our excited way down Olive Road and had just reached the humped-back road bridge which crosses the main railway line when it happened…..
Another burst of machine-gun fire made us jump, it was much closer this time. Suddenly, skimming very low over the roof of the Co-op Laundry [ the tower of which housed an air-raid siren — which remained silent ] came a single engine fighter plane.
We looked up and saw it head-on, someone cried ‘… it’s the Spitfire …’ As the pilot saw us, the angle of the plane changed, the wings tilted, and we saw the black crosses on the wings — a Messerschmitt 109 ! I saw tiny jets of flame spurting from the edges of the wings — followed by a rapid chattering noise. We all automatically flung ourselves against the pavement wall, as we had been taught to do, - the bullets hit the centre of the road, ricocheting in all directions.
Even now many years later, I wonder if that pilot was deliberately aiming at us …. Or was he just a rotten shot ?

Close Encounter Number Two

Shortly after the Olive road incident I was again on my way home from the Knoll School,,
This time with my best pal at that time, Mike Richardson. The two of us were in Ingram Crescent at
the point where the houses back onto the railway line, about half-way around the crescent. The sky
was cloudless, all was still, no air-raid alert was in progress…..
Suddenly, an enormous [ it seemed to us ] German bomber, [ could have been a Heinkel
111 ], swooped low over the railway line, just missing the roof-tops of the houses on our right. It
was a twin engine bomber, flying I think on only one engine. Mike and I stood rooted to the
pavement [ we forgot the drill about flinging yourself against the nearest wall ! ], looking up we
clearly saw the front gunner in his glass dome in the nose of the plane. He was hunched over his
machine-gun. He could have been dead; we didn’t wait to find out!
Mike took off at great speed, running down one side of the crescent, while I did the same
in the opposite direction! The bomber limped on toward the sea as the sirens began to sound. I often
wonder if that plane made it back to his home base. If that front gunner was alive and trigger- happy
I might not be writing this now!

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