70 year old WWII film found & developed

[Peter Laidler]

Amazing. I remember a small book publisher in Newbury in the early 70's, about 1973 or 4, publishing a small book about the recovery of a HE-111(?) bomber that was badly damaged by RAF fighter machine gun fire and was forced to crash land somewhere in Berkshire. I seem to recasll from the small booklet and later, speaking to the team that the crew indicated that they were unable to land and were about to escape by parachute before coming in to crash - or whatever the sequence was but whatever it was, it was no longer a threat and was circled by a/a couple of spitfires before the remaining pilot crash landed it but tried to set fire to the remains.

When the remains were uncovered by a group of local enthusiasts (this sort of thing was hardly ever done then.....) they recovered loads and loads of stuff from the plane including loads of belongings including a French (probably looted!) camera in the cabin area with a loaded film which was then carefully removed in a darkroom and developed. Usual pictures of the crew etc etc including a few at the end of the roll showing the RAF plane circling that was presumably going to finish it off if it didn't crash land as it had indicated. Did they REALLY waggle their wings.....? You could even see the reflection of the RAF pilots goggles and markings on the plane.

I got to know the bloke who was part of the digging team, Brian Bailey. He had false leg from below the knee down and used to ride a Norton Commando. It was him who asked me to come and help recover the crashed USAF bomber from the old USAF WW2 base at Membury a couple of years later. It wasn't a bomber but a crashed Horsa(?) glider loaded with troops rehearsing for DDay.

But this stuff must still be there - somewhere