Friday 25 August 1944 –  Author: Derek Sadler, Prestwood, January 2000

(The scanned article is now available as a gallery follow link to view it.)

That night two Vickers Wellington Mark 10 bombers took off from RAF Peplow, (No. 83 Operational Training Unit, Bomber Command) airborne one-minute-apart to practise a night navigation exercise, a “bullseye”, which involved a cross-country flight incorporating several different turning points anywhere in the UK and usually a dummy bombing attack on a specified town, aimed to give trainee crews experience and bind them into a cohesive unit.

The first Wellington, HF517, was piloted by Flying Officer Erik Michielsen, a Dutchman, with a five-man British crew; the second, MF589, piloted by a Canadian, Flying Officer Elwood Smith, with a four-Canadian and one English crew.*

The two aircraft collided over Prestwood at 01.25 am on Saturday 26 August and fell as burning, disintegrating wrecks into the village.

From the trail of debris it would appear the aircraft were travelling in a north-westerly direction, the first pieces descending alongside the village hall, main pieces spreading along Honor End Lane, the survivor found in Lodge Wood and the tail unit in the field across the valley, near Hampden Bottom.

Of the twelve crew members, eleven were killed in the sky or on the ground in Prestwood. As aircrew they were all volunteers who had enlisted for the duration of the war, coming together from Canada, England, Holland and Scotland. Their misfortune to meet over Prestwood in the early hours of 26 August 1944 was a tragedy, but sadly not uncommon. *

Recollections of the tragedy in Prestwood

Messrs Gibbons and Bignall (village post-master), Air Raid Precaution (ARP) Wardens on duty that night, in the absence of any “alert”, were getting some rest in the ARP Hut behind the Village Hall. Awoken by a bang and thud, with their hut and the hall showered by mud and stones, the lights started to flicker and went out. They could see the light of fires in the distance outside and met up with Special Constable Sgt Free who said “It’s alright, it’s in Speen”, but the wardens disagreed, Mr Bignall taking a look down Honor End Lane on his bike, returning saying “A plane has hit the side of a house”, whilst Mr Gibbons rang emergency services in Great Missenden.

Back in Honor End Lane, they heard a cry for help and, with aid from a lady ambulance driver, found a crew member in the Sheep-Wash Pond. It’s believed that he died before reaching hospital. Four bodies were found in the fields behind the pond, the parachute of one, although deployed, had failed to inflate. A second, his hand still gripping the unpulled parachute release, suggesting that the bale-out was at a comparatively low altitude; another body was found, still in his gun turret, in the Prestwood Brickfields. Mr Gibbons, unaware that not one, but two, aircraft had crashed, went on to his work at the village bakery.

Mrs E G Smith’s (nee Groom) father owned land where a lot of the wreckage landed. They lived in a farm in Kiln Road then, along with an evacuee from London. She said they’d woken to a loud noise at the back of the farm, and her father and the evacuee dressed and rushed outside to find an airman in the holly tree, still alive but groaning. The airman died before Dr Wilson arrived. Mrs Smith remembers that part of an aircraft had fallen onto farm outbuildings and, the next morning, she’d had to lead the horses to avoid fallen wires.

The late Mrs Hilda Beesley, then owner of Clarendon Farm in Clarendon Road, saw the falling wreckage of the two planes, locked together and ablaze. The collision noise waking her, she ran to her bedroom window, and watched in horror as the main pieces of the aircraft fell, only a few hundred feet away from the farm. Two engines crashed down into her fields and blazing aviation fuel sprayed over cherry trees near the farmhouse.

The aircraft that Mr Bignall had reported as hitting the side of a house was, in fact, a wing and part of the fuselage of one of the Wellingtons and a tall tree fortunately prevented the wreckage actually hitting the cottage, now called Greenlands, Honor End Lan, occupied then by Mr & Mrs Holt, the Baptist minister and his wife. Tremendous fires burnt around the cottage, setting fire to the newly tarred road. Mr & Mrs Holt were forced to flee out onto the road through the flames, both receiving severe burns that meant spending many months in hospital; Mrs Holt received seventy-five skin grafts.

Many other villagers had been startled by the noise of the crashing aircraft. Bill Howard joined the search with his brother and found the only surviving crew member, the Navigator from Flying Officer Michielsen’s Wellington, Pilot Officer Junor.* Discovered wandering in a dazed condition in Lodge Wood, the Scottish P/O Junor was taken back to their home at the Brickworks, where the young daughter of the house remembers sewing up the tears in his trousers.

As the villagers took stock of the tragedy, George Tyler recalls his father couldn’t get to work on the Saturday morning. He’d tried to cycle along Honor End Lane when a car, coming from the opposite direction, had caught up a bunch of telephone/power lines which pulled his father off his bike. He later went with his father to look at the engine and fuselage wreckage in the corner of the field, bounded by what is now Honorwood Close. RAF police told him there was also a body there and that another one had been found in the Old Baptist Churchyard, Kiln Road.

The second engine landed in a small orchard, then behind the butcher’s shop on Chequers Parade, with a body close by, and a radio was discovered in the doorway of the chemist shop, then situated where the office block and opticians is now.

Mr D Hawes, aged 13 then, of Lower Honor End Farm, recalls a tail unit found to the north of the village up against a hedgerow on the opposite side of the valley. He picked up pieces of plywood full of nails to prevent the cattle injuring themselves, and also found maps and silk gloves. His friend, Colin Lewis, found a box kite whilst exploring fuselage wreckage. [maybe part of the escape dinghy radio kit, used to fly the aerial].

Mr J Britcher, then 17, lived opposite what is now Hildreth’s Garden Centre on the Wycombe Road. Biking along Clarendon Road to work at the Brickfields at 7am the next morning he was warned to be careful along the lane by Mr Underhill. He noticed a flying helmet hanging from some wires and, because of debris in Honor End Lane, had to carry his bike past St Winifrids, where there was a plane’s centre section on the poultry farm. At work he was told to check for damage, finding water bottles, thermos flasks and a radio which he handed over to the RAF personnel who had arrived to investigate the crash. The radio was said to include an explosive charge to disable the aircraft if it landed in enemy territory. [An IFF unit (Identification Friend or Foe) perhaps?] Mr Britcher recalled that for many years, even after resurfacing, Honor End Lane would turn bright green after heavy rain, outside Greenlands [de-icing fluid or hydraulic oil?]