I was talking to my father before Christmas about the war as he was a keen schoolboy aircraft spotter in those days.Amongst the many stories was the one when he cycled the few miles to Covehithe (Suffolk) to Porters Farm near which was a large field where he saw a captured Fokker G-1 that had landed there.
There is a Dutch website with information about this http://www.aeropedia.be/web/content.php?article.1001005
Other things he saw over this part of Suffolk (Wangford,near Southwold) were P-47’s colliding,Kennedy’s B-24 blowing-up,a wave of Dambuster Lancasters heading out very low level,B-24’s being shot down the night the Luftwaffe followed them back,Col Hub Zemke landing back at Halesworth airfield with the hydraulics shot out,P-38 belly landing in a field after an anti aircraft shell had passed though one engine over Berlin without exploding and had limped back on one engine which had seized-up as he crossed the Suffolk coast,B-24 taking off from Halesworth airfield one Sunday on a mission when the nosewheel collapsed and it went along the runway splitting open as it went,an American guard shoved my father in a muddy ditch and when the B-24 came to a halt he told my father to get on his bike and ride like hell out of it,he got part the way home when the bomb load went up.Then when he got home he got a telling off from his mother for getting his Sunday best all muddy !!!
There were lots more stories as well.
Cheers – Graham
By: g-1reaper - 30th December 2009 at 13:21
Another version of the story;
Meinecke was in the plot and let Leegstra go.
When he [Leegstra] entered English airspace he lowered the landinggear to show he was intending to land his aircraft. There was no interception of any kind.
By: Archer - 30th December 2009 at 12:39
Quick translation of the site linked to above:
A G-1 escapes to England
After the capitulation in May 1940, 4 Mercury engined G-1s were captured by the Germans. 13 Wasp engined G-1s were on the assembly line at the time and were finished by the Germans, one of these was number 362. After completing the aircraft Dutch test pilots would perform the test flights. To make sure that they didn’t escape, the fuel tanks were filled with the minimum amount needed and a second G-1 would follow with a German pilot on board. Still, plans were made to fly a G-1 to England. Test pilot T.H. Leegstra decided together with aeronautical engineer Piet Vos, from the board of Fokker Aircraft, to make an attempt on monday 5 May 1941. The aircraft would be number 362.
In complete secrecy the tanks were filled to enable the aircraft to stay aloft for 2½ hours. The second G-1 was flown by Emil Meinecke. The two G-1s took off at 16:20 from Schiphol and flew towards the IJsselmeer. Leegstra started performing aerobatics over the IJsselmeer ‘to test the G-1’. In reality he was trying to shake off Meinecke. Using the clouds to his advantage he managed to escape Meinecke’s attention, who returned to Schiphol thinking that Leegstra had crashed in the IJsselmeer. By that time Leegstra was flying over the North Sea. When he approached the English coast three Hurricanes came over for a closer look.
Leegstra flew low over the East Suffolk coast, 10 km south of Great Yarmouth. At this point several batteries opened fire on the G-1 from the ground. After a 40 minute flight Leegstra landed the, by then bullet riddled, G-1 on the first field he could find. Two days later, on 7 May, the G-1 was ferried to Mortesham Heath (sic). On 12 May it was flown on to Farnborough, to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, for testing. Even though the G-1 was painted in RAF markings the G-1 never flew again.
Donated to the Miles Aircraft Factory, who wanted the wooden wings to test how they would withstand the British climate, it was left to deteriorate and was eventually scrapped.
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December 29, 2009 at 10:46 pm