Now if you belong to my generation one of the things you will remember fondly are the Airfix kits which offered a youngster the pleasure of assembling a whole range of plastic models from ships, and planes, to cars and tanks.
They came in different scales but if you were serious and had limited pocket money then it was the 1:72 scale planes that fitted the bill.
The cheapest were I think two shillings and sixpence and came in a plastic bag of which the Spitfire, Hurricane and Messerschmitt 109 and 110 were the most popular.
But going up range meant six shillings and a boxed kit of which for me the German Heinkel He 111 bomber was a favourite more so because of the glazed greenhouse nose which was a later adaption to a design which had begun as a cargo plane in the early 1930s.
Now of course at the age of nine or ten it is difficult to separate the joy of assembling and painting the model with its actual lethal purpose, but I was reminded of this only yesterday when I came across the story of the He 111 which was shot down and crashed in Hazel Grove in May 1941 and by one of those strange twists of coincidence the plane that crashed was the same variant as the one I spent hours trying to recreate.
This was the He 111 P4 which entered service just before the outbreak of the war and was used in Poland and later the Battle of Britain.
Our particular downed plane was on its way to Liverpool but was diverted to Manchester when it was intercepted and shot down crashing in a field belonging to Springfield Farm, close to Hazel Grove golf course.
The RAF crew responsible were Flight Lieutenant E C Deansley who had fought in the Battle of Britain and his rear air gunner Sergeant W J Scott.
Now the story was covered by the local press but I doubt I would have ever come across it had my old friend David Harrop not acquired a battery box from the destroyed aircraft.
And to be truthful I wouldn’t have made the connection between the box and my plastic kit had not David told me the story.
Nor is that quite the end because along with a lot of other material from his collection they will be on display at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery later in the year to mark the climax of the Battle Britain which happened 75 years ago.
And like so many in David’s collection these are more personal and have the power to transport you back to the conflict.
Which is all I am going to say, other than that the four German crew parachuted out and were captured by the Home Guard almost allowing me to adapt that line “for you the war is over.”
But those events of three quarters of a century ago were all too serious and that is part of the purpose of the exhibition which is less to glorify the conflict but more to mark the sacrifice of that generation.
Pictures; the Heinkel He 111 over Poland, September 1939 from the German Federal Archive featured in Heinkel He 111 Wickipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_111
and and two the battery box from the collection of David Harrop.
 |
| He 111 over Poland September 1939 |
The cheapest were I think two shillings and sixpence and came in a plastic bag of which the Spitfire, Hurricane and Messerschmitt 109 and 110 were the most popular.
But going up range meant six shillings and a boxed kit of which for me the German Heinkel He 111 bomber was a favourite more so because of the glazed greenhouse nose which was a later adaption to a design which had begun as a cargo plane in the early 1930s.
Now of course at the age of nine or ten it is difficult to separate the joy of assembling and painting the model with its actual lethal purpose, but I was reminded of this only yesterday when I came across the story of the He 111 which was shot down and crashed in Hazel Grove in May 1941 and by one of those strange twists of coincidence the plane that crashed was the same variant as the one I spent hours trying to recreate.
This was the He 111 P4 which entered service just before the outbreak of the war and was used in Poland and later the Battle of Britain.
 |
| He 111 battery box 2015 |
The RAF crew responsible were Flight Lieutenant E C Deansley who had fought in the Battle of Britain and his rear air gunner Sergeant W J Scott.
Now the story was covered by the local press but I doubt I would have ever come across it had my old friend David Harrop not acquired a battery box from the destroyed aircraft.
And to be truthful I wouldn’t have made the connection between the box and my plastic kit had not David told me the story.
Nor is that quite the end because along with a lot of other material from his collection they will be on display at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery later in the year to mark the climax of the Battle Britain which happened 75 years ago.
 |
| Battery Box 2015 |
Which is all I am going to say, other than that the four German crew parachuted out and were captured by the Home Guard almost allowing me to adapt that line “for you the war is over.”
But those events of three quarters of a century ago were all too serious and that is part of the purpose of the exhibition which is less to glorify the conflict but more to mark the sacrifice of that generation.
Pictures; the Heinkel He 111 over Poland, September 1939 from the German Federal Archive featured in Heinkel He 111 Wickipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_111
and and two the battery box from the collection of David Harrop.
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