V2 rockets, and plane crashes

This story is about V2 rockets. It was probably spring of 1945, and I was 15 years old. I was playing with friends around the trenches on Blackshots playing field. Someone said you could see a silver streak as the V2 s took off. It was a beautiful clear day. As we played we saw three silver streaks go up in the sky. Suddenly some minutes later we heard a very loud bang and saw a cloud of smoke as probably one of the V2s exploded several hundred feet above us. There was a tremendous noise like an express train, and shrapnel came down and damaged some houses in Blackshots Lane and the surrounding area.

When I was 13 there was an occasion when a Dornier Bomber was shot down by a couple of spitfires. Blowing up as it hit the ground at the end of Meesons Lane, the pilot jumped out, landing in a tree, hanging by his parachute straps. We went and saw this, looking for souvenirs of airplane pieces and bullets. A few days later, talking to my aunt, the District Midwife, she told me she had been called out to an emergency case. A lady, who was heavily pregnant, heard a knock on her front door. When she opened the door there was no one there, then she looked down and saw a man’s head complete with helmet on her door step. She went into hysterics and premature labour. She eventually had the baby and as far as we knew both mother and child were well.

The first plane that crashed in Thurrock was in 1939, based in Hornchurch, they used to fly at roof height. Three of them were flying back, at roof level, along Tenneson Avenue, Grays and one of the planes and the lead plane wings touched. We were watching from The Green School (Grays School). The lead plane flipped over and was heading for the school playground, but the pilot managed to divert to the sports field, saving us at the school. My father was one of the first on the scene, the pilot had died. The ambulance and police then took over.

In the spring of 1940, a little group of us, going to school in Culper Road, Tilbury, when an air raid siren went off. There was a dog fight between a Spitfire and Messerschmitt. It went on for a few minutes, all the lads cheering the Spitfire on. The spitfire burst into flames and the pilot bailed out. The Messerschmitt turned back and gunned the pilot down as he was floating down. He landed in Pitsea, shot to pieces. This story got around the school, which really made the up until then unknown place Germany into a place where we really hated the people

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