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Wartime Hurn and Thereabouts by Tony Talbot
One of my
earlier memories was of the night of the massive German raid on Coventry on
Thursday 14 November 1940. There
were three streams of Heinkel 111 bombers, one coming in over Lincolnshire, a
second over Dungeness and a third over Portland.
Further along the road, adjacent to the threshold of runway 35, there was a raised gun emplacement, manned by the RAF Regiment. It must have been quite disconcerting for the gun crew when a Halifax landed short of the runway with its nose protruding from the hedge over the road. – but it did provide an alternative access to the farm!
During the war, there were all sorts of noises during the night, but one night there was a huge explosion which must have woken everyone in the Ferndown and Stapehill area. Off we went the next morning (must have been the weekend or a holiday) to search for the cause, but the grapevine amongst we boys soon informed us that there was now a huge crater at Stapehill. The crater was unusual in that the bottom was covered in shreds of silk, all colours of the rainbow, plus many more in the surrounding area. It was obviously a parachute mine, aimed we speculated at the brickwork tower in Brickyard Lane, adjoining what is now the industrial estate behind Schlumbergers, to the east. Although it had missed, the famous traitor Lord Haw Haw announced the next day on the radio, that the “war factory” had been demolished! We listened to him as a source of amusement but it was a little close to home, and apparently he knew the area quite well. Whether the works produced armaments, no locals would say as it was obviously a closed topic – “careless talk costs lives” was a well known contemporary slogan. My brother and I spent all our free time and holidays, after the compulsory homework, on Slop Bog on the north side of Ferndown. We collected “chaff/window”. For the younger reader out there, these were narrow (1” x 8”) strips of aluminium which were dropped by enemy aircraft to interfere with radar detection and tracking. We would spend hours collecting it, rolling it into balls, month after month, but I do not recall finding a useful purpose for it – that was as exciting as it got! In those days you had to improvise, for there was no recreation ground, no footballs, and you just had to get away from home. In our case it was the bog, because Dad slept in the daytime, and then cycled from Ferndown to the cordite factory at Holton Heath on the night shift. Noise was a definite no-no!
In the summer months we would take the occasional trip by bicycle to Ibsley to see the remains of a Lightning and to watch the aircraft movements. Another cycle trip we made was to the Carlton Hotel in Bournemouth, from where we could see and hear, the mayhem over on Sandbanks as preparations were being made for D-Day. Then there was the riddle of the forced landing of the Typhoon at Slop Bog. It had clipped the tops of the trees making its landing on the only bit of solid ground in the area, travelling west to east, but unfortunately we were not there to witness it. My brother walked back along the flight path from the 40 – 50 yards from where it had stopped, and what did he find, but a pure white draw string muslin bag containing a couple of crystal size objects which the pilot had presumably thrown out to be picked up later. Mother saw the find we had made and promptly ordered us to return it to the guard the following day. Accordingly we received another rollockin to leave things alone and don’t go anywhere near the aircraft.
The extent of the trouble the authorities went to retrieve the airplane was quite extraordinary; trees had to be felled, a stream forded, and terrible terrain traversed. At last, the “Queen Mary”, a very, very, long vehicle made all the trouble worthwhile, as the Typhoon was taken away, maybe to fly again. Earlier in the war years as a nipper, after dark in the woods, I thought a UFO had come to snatch me away! The pitch black was turned into a mass of bright light with a low flying aircraft overhead. In subsequent years I gather it was the testing of the most effective “Leigh Light” used extensively by Coastal Command against the dreaded U boats in the South West Approaches to the UK. Returning to the subject of “chaff/window”, I was “bounced” by a returning Marauder at tree top level, after a presumed mission, when packets were dropped quite close. They turned out to be unopened chaff, surplus to requirements. Oh, the pictures one could have taken – except of course there was no film available!
Another vivid memory was of a Heinkel 111 passing low over central Ferndown west to east, releasing 3 bombs. One made a nasty mess of our cake shop, the next in Princes Road, and the third in the grounds of what was Manor School. On the grapevine we heard that a Spitfire shot it down near the airport. D-Day meant the earliest of starts for everybody as the air became thicker and thicker with every aircraft under the sun heading in one direction. Unfortunately, for many it was “war over” as they gave their lives in the invasion, or became casualties. The hectic time became apparent as the route from Hurn to St. Leonards hospital was to see a rush of transport, plus Red Cross trains pulled by “War Department” goliaths. Presumably the goliaths were American and they could be viewed at Wimborne Station over Leigh Bridge under which we cycled to and from school, and now long since demolished. More and More of the hospital grounds alongside the main road became a torch of hope with brightly coloured gowns being attended to by nurses as we had seen in the pre-war American films. We were to see the patients closer as the weeks passed by, and they wheeled their wheelchairs to our source of amusement – swimming in the Moors River at Trickets Cross. This is the same river as that at the threshold of runway 26 further downstream. They would watch us thrashing around and told us off in no uncertain terms to “get the hell out of there” (or words to that effect, as it would be polluted by the hospital. It was a good job they were not around when we emerged with fat juicy leeches attached! I remember my parents received a letter from the Americans, asking whether we would be kind enough to entertain a soldier or two. They agreed but were politely turned down as it was female company that was preferred! At the end of the war, the aircraft types at Hurn changed. BOAC was much in evidence and I applied for a job with them when I left school. Their offices were in a building on Matchams Road, just about opposite Moors Close, a concrete block manned by smart girls in uniform. Six silver Armstrong Whitworth Ensigns were parked in the north east corner of the airfield, line abreast, a change from the twins and singles, and the drab olive colours of wartime.
And the job at BOAC? I am still waiting to hear from them, but it’s a good job I tried elsewhere!. |
These
are just some jottings from the wartime years
They had started out from a Luftwaffe base at Vannes, near St. Nazaire in France, and were directed to their
target by radio beams. The sirens started at 7 pm followed shortly afterwards
by the distinctive engine noise of the He 111. There were hundreds of them and
they seemed so low. A ten year old’s imagination ran wild with visions of
paratroopers landing in their thousands, battering down the door. Sleep was out
of the question and then we heard the bombers’ return with a completely
different sound, and not a single element of resistance to their return to their
base in France. The “All Clear” siren did not go off until 7 am, 12 hours after
the alarm had sounded. The next morning revealed the devastation that had been
inflicted on Coventry, and our concerns were nothing compared to those of the
people of the Midlands. I often wonder whether the route to Coventry through
Portland would have been chosen if RAF Hurn had existed at the time.
RAF
Hurn became operational in 1941 and the airport road was lined with mature oak
trees and just a miserly fence and a deep ditch separated it from the airfield
perimeter. The deep ditch was useful for concealing our bicycles as we observed
the activities on the airfield. On one occasion, but there must have been many
more, we had the rare sight of a line of black coloured Lysanders. I deduced
that they were often used by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) for
inserting operatives into continental Europe at night.
There
were Typhoon squadrons based at Hurn and this would have been about the time
when advanced landing strips had been opened up in France in the months
following D-Day. We could not be sure to say that the Typhoon was returning
from there, but putting two and two together it seems very fishy, especially as
the mystery objects could not have come from anywhere else. 
