Failure at Castle Bromwich Airfield

The present Castle Vale Estate is built on the old airfield used to test the Spitfires made in the factory across the Chester Road. Many of the aircrews on both sides were often trained at haste and particularly the art of navigation was not as proficient as it should be. Spitfire pilots would often follow railway lines looking for a station name so that they could find their bearings, sometimes meeting colleagues coming down the line in the opposite direction.
The story is recounted in Stephen Pile's "Book of Heroic Failures" of a German
Bomber landing at the Castle Bromwich field obvioudly lost, but taking off again before the sentries could get the clearance to actually shoot and disable the aircraft.

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