Description:

I remember I was at home for Christmas 1944. I had left Newton School the year before and was helping the war effort by working on a local farm. Mother had just finished cooking the Christmas dinner and we were waiting for my sister Gwen who was working at Eaton Bishop to arrive. Here came Gwen shouting at me to get my bike. She said that she was sure that there was an aeroplane crashed somewhere by Lower House. I didn’t really know what to believe.

When we arrived at the Slough Common there were the four-engine plane all in bits and pieces. We had a good look around but we could not see any survivors. We were the only two people on the Common. We picked up a few little mementoes and came back home and had our Christmas Dinner.

We decided to go there again about one and a half hours later, but by then we were not allowed to go within 500yards of the wreck. We could see then how the plane had only missed the house of the Cook family by about 80 yards.

We discovered later that it was an American four-engine bomber, which was damaged over Germany so the crew set the controls and bailed out. The plane crossed Holland, the North Sea and all of England to come to rest at the border of Wales.

Trevor Powell

Little Green Farm, Newton

Observations:

For further details of this crash, click here