There was a very brief piece in the Canterbury paper (name uncertain, now) at the time, and a longer account full of thrilling derring-do in the Whitstable Times for the following week. No pictures in either edition – of anything, 100% text, though I’ve never forgotten the ads that every woman should read Nurse Drew’s leaflet. The illustration left no doubt that said Nurse did not let little things like the phase of the moon get in her way! Funny what you recall…
There was also a later piece reporting Battle of Britain Sunday in 1943 or 1944 with a slightly different report, confirming the earlier report – described at the time as “a coastal town” – as Whitstable. The only photo was of the parade – maybe 3 or 4 photos in the whole edition.
It’s possible that the Kent Messenger archive might have something as I recall one of H R Pratt-Boormann’s books had a photo of the Seasalter crash in it – the one used in the Daily Mail report of Andy and Joe Potter’s activity. I believe that I’ve also seen that one on a Whitstable website (Simply Whitstable?), as I did the picture of the body being carried ashore. Another view appears in Richard Collier’s “Eagle Day”, and I have a feeling there’s at least one more out there. There’s also film somewhere as a few seconds of appeared in “Spitfire Ace”. It seems they used all their film on the 13th, and had none left for the 16th… Since the publication of Andy’s article in the Mail the photos in that are on line – I liked the source of this one!
http://liveghana.tv/trending/bodies-of-two-luftwaffe-pilots-that-have-lain-in-unmarked-grave-since-1940-to-be-relocated-after-historians-finally-identify-them.html
As far as I can recall from the eye-witness accounts I gathered it crashed at low tide, and could have been exposed for several hours depending on the state of the tide – on a spring tide it goes out way past the site, while it is not uncovered at neap tides. One witness recalled that it burnt for some time and a group of soldiers approached it as the fire seemed to burn out, when something exploded much to their chagrin. I have a piece of bomb casing that was recovered much later, rusty enough to suggest that it had been hanging around since 1940 in that state, that suggests to me that at least one bomb went off at the time. However a number remained to be unearthed by RN bomb disposal in 1991, and they in turn managed to bury an SC50 under a pile of mud for yours truly to stumble across it in 1992! I think how the bombs managed to remain there after the site had been dug at least once before the RN got there is best left to those who dug there… They came scarily close to owing me a new pair of pants!
Andy, Elliot – if anything I have is of use to you email me!
Adrian
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