# Recovery Of Air Crashes During WW2



## ajay16 (Sep 3, 2020)

What would the proceedure have been after an air crash over UK soil during WW2?

I've had a decent Google but can't really find much on the subject. I gather if it was on somoenes land any remnants would have to be removed/lorried away?


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## stona (Sep 3, 2020)

I am assuming you mean what happened to crashed aircraft in Britain during WW2.

All crashed aircraft, both British and enemy were the responsibility of the RAF. A network of Maintenance Units across the country were allocated responsibility for the collection and disposal of aircraft wreckages.

In the case of the RAF, if an aircraft failed to return from an operational or other flight its parent unit would inform the Air Ministry, which in turn informed No. 43 Maintenance Group based at Cowley, near Oxford. If it was known where the aircraft had crashed or made an emergency landing the staff of No 43 Maintenance Group would pass this information to the RAF Maintenance Unit that covered the area in which the aircraft had been lost. The airframe or wreckage would be inspected by that MU's crash inspector (usually an officer of Pilot Officer rank) who would make arrangements for its recovery and/or disposal by the local MU's Crash Party, typically a team of eight to ten men under the command of a senior NCO.

Enemy wrecks were treated in a similar way, though there was self evidently an intelligence interest. Each MU had an RAF Technical Intelligence Officer attached, from the A.I. I(g) department. Once this officer had gleaned any information he could from the airframe or wreck and entered into his 'Form C', he would release it for recovery by the MU. Any ammunition, weapons and other ordnance had to be dealt with, and this might involve the Army.
A second department (A.I. I(k)) was responsible for gathering and interpreting information about the Luftwaffe’s organisational structure and personnel. It was officers from this branch that interrogated Luftwaffe airmen (these interrogations could be what we might today call ‘hard’), initially in the Tower of London, but later in 1940, as numbers of prisoners increased, at Trent Park, Cockfosters. This branch also had field officers attached to the MUs, who could make an initial interrogation soon after an enemy airman arrived and would also gather intelligence from documents found on the airmen or in the aircraft, like Ausweis (identity cards), pay books, Feldpostnummern (from letters), etc.

Both British and enemy wrecks were broken up and the various material separated at the MU dumps, aluminium alloys, magnesium alloys, steel, copper, brass, plastics, rubber, ‘glass; etc. all had to be separated. The Northern Aluminium Company works near Banbury were the main destination for the aluminium, which was cast into ingots for the British aircraft industry. .

Many British aircraft, deemed repairable, went into the Civilian Repair Organisation. A very few German aircraft were salvaged and sent to the RAE at Farnborough for assessment.

During the Battle of Britain the brunt of this work fell on No. 49 MU, located at RAF Faygate near Horsham in Sussex. At its peak this unit could muster 15 Crash Parties, and they were needed. To help ease the burden on the RAF personnel the Air Ministry engaged several local civilian contractors from the road haulage industry. This is why you may have seen pictures of aircraft on civilian vehicles, companies like A.V. Nicholls of Brighton, and Coast Transport Ltd of Portsmouth being typical of the firms employed.

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## ajay16 (Sep 4, 2020)

Superb, that answers my question more than fully. 

I knew someone on here would know 👌

Huge thanks! I


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## Peter Gunn (Sep 4, 2020)

stona said:


> I am assuming you mean what happened to crashed aircraft in Britain during WW2.
> 
> All crashed aircraft, both British and enemy were the responsibility of the RAF. A network of Maintenance Units across the country were allocated responsibility for the collection and disposal of aircraft wreckages.
> 
> ...


You know, I really wish you'd research and give a well thought out explanation instead of these off the cuff top of your head sound bite style responses... sheesh, you and drgondog with these flippant answers...

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## stona (Sep 4, 2020)

ajay16 said:


> Superb, that answers my question more than fully.
> 
> I knew someone on here would know 👌
> 
> Huge thanks! I



No worries.

I'll just add that the securing of the site usually fell initially to the local Police and Local Defence Volunteers who would also take charge of any prisoners in the case of an enemy aircraft. These were by definition local men, living in the area, who would know how to get to a crash site as quickly as possible. The responsibility would be handed over to a unit of the Regular Army as soon as practicable. Any property officially seized would normally be handed to the Army or RAF. It's amazing how often the property of downed British pilots was handed in to the nearest RAF station, this included everything from 'Mae Wests' to a pair of shoes!

Very often, by the time the RAF arrived there was a guard mounted on the site by the Army, but there are plenty of pictures showing that civilians were not kept rigorously away. Luftwaffe aircraft that came down in more remote areas, or areas not inundated with wrecks like SE England, seem to have become something of an attraction for the locals. You'll find pictures in local press archives of people in their Sunday best posing and mugging it up for the camera in front of such sites. Small boys seem to have been very good souvenir collectors, even under the eyes of the Army guards, generally going for bits they could hide under a bed 

The pilfering of 'souvenirs' from crashed aircraft was strongly discouraged, but it happened. The clocks of Luftwaffe aircraft were a particular favourite. One Auxiliary Fireman was fined by magistrates for 'liberating' the pilot's side arm from the cockpit of Werner Bartels's Bf 109 after his forced landing.

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## pbehn (Sep 4, 2020)

I read years ago that the British made a breakthrough in the "battle of the beams" when a crew member said to another "they wont find it" as they were taken away from a German bomber forced down, one of the police spoke German and the aircraft was taken down to the rivets to find "it".

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## SaparotRob (Sep 4, 2020)

pbehn said:


> I read years ago that the British made a breakthrough in the "battle of the beams" when a crew member said to another "they wont find it" as they were taken away from a German bomber forced down, one of the police spoke German and the aircraft was taken down to the rivets to find "it".


Do you have anything more on that?


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## pbehn (Sep 4, 2020)

SaparotRob said:


> Do you have anything more on that?


Oh Jeez that is from one of the first factual books I read as a kid, it was my brothers. It was called "The Battle of Britain" as I remember no idea who the author was but the discussion was about the Knickebein system.

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## SaparotRob (Sep 4, 2020)

Oh well.


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## pbehn (Sep 4, 2020)

SaparotRob said:


> Do you have anything more on that?


One thing I do remember was that the translation of knickebein wasn't the literal "broken leg" but "Googly" from a type of delivery from a "leg break" bowler in cricket Googly - Wikipedia

As Stona has said trophy hunters were very clever but they didnt know the damage they were doing, there was a lot of intelligence gained from wrecks, ideally they should have been left as found.

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## SaparotRob (Sep 4, 2020)

I can honestly say that I never knew that.


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## pbehn (Sep 4, 2020)

SaparotRob said:


> I can honestly say that I never knew that.


I havnt seen any reference to it in any recent documentary or book but I definitely read it and it makes more sense than the literal translation. Or it may have been a way of distracting away from the subject to put off any spy or eavesdropper.

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## SaparotRob (Sep 5, 2020)

pbehn said:


> I havnt seen any reference to it in any recent documentary or book but I definitely read it and it makes more sense than the literal translation. Or it may have been a way of distracting away from the subject to put off any spy or eavesdropper.


I was talking about the cricket stuff.


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## stona (Sep 5, 2020)

SaparotRob said:


> Do you have anything more on that?



I am not aware of that incident, but it is entirely possible. In reading first hand German accounts of their experiences in the Battle of Britain period I have been surprised by how many came across British people, at or soon after their capture, who understood and spoke some German. This does not apply only to officers, who in 1940s Britain would certainly have been better educated. Many comment on the excellent ('accentless') German spoken by the intelligence officers at their interrogations, and this would apply to those attached to the MUs making the initial interrogation.
We imagine ourselves as rather monolingual, even today, but this is not really the case. A lot of British people have a few words at least of French, German or Spanish. It's always handy for ordering a taxi or dobbing your mates in to pay for the next round! (One of the first *useful* German phrases I learned was 'two beers please, he's paying'.)

Here is an example in the account of Gefreiter Ewald Schank, who had a miraculous escape from Bf 110 S9+MK, shot down in Epgr. 210's attack on Manston on 14 August,.

_“I dragged myself through the wreckage to search for the pilot_ [Unteroffizier Hans Steding, 23 +] _but could see nothing. As I was all alone and helpless on the runway, three men in blue uniforms came. I did not know, or understand, any English words at the time. I said to the soldiers in German: “My friend is in the aircraft”. They took me in their midst and led me to a shelter, in which there were soldiers in brown uniforms and steel helmets with guns. A soldier spoke to me in German, but I no longer recall what he said. I asked him: “When will I be shot?” “You will not be shot” he replied “you will go to a prisoner camp with many others”. I probably said “Ich bin glucklich, dass mich Gott gerettet hat” _[I’m lucky that God has saved me]_.
When the raid was over, I was taken in a car by two soldiers to hospital, and was immediately attended to by a doctor. I was in hospital for approximately 10 days. The following day_ [meaning 15 August_] I was told that the remains of the pilot had been recovered from the wreckage.”_

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## pbehn (Sep 5, 2020)

You don't have to be massively fluent in German "They wont find it" is "Sie werden es nicht finden".


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## Airframes (Sep 5, 2020)

The reference to "They won't find it" etc rings a bell.
It's probably in one of my books somewhere, but I seem to recall that this comment was overheard, possibly by an Intelligence officer, and the outcome was that a more thorough examination of the aircraft concerned was called for.
I may be wrong, as I'm going off memory here, but I believe that, eventually, a key component of "Knickebein " (crooked leg, referring to the cross beam arrangement), was found hidden inside the casing of one of the standard radio receivers. This lead to Prof R.V. Jones and his team to be able to discover the "workings" of the system, and eventually jam the "beams".
In this instance, it looks like a case of "Careless talk _*saves*_ lives" !

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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 5, 2020)

pbehn said:


> You don't have to be massively fluent in German "They wont find it" is "Sie werden es nicht finden".


Ich werde mein Deutsch nicht finden!

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## stona (Sep 5, 2020)

Airframes said:


> I seem to recall that this comment was overheard, possibly by an Intelligence officer, and the outcome was that a more thorough examination of the aircraft concerned was called for.



If it was an Intelligence Officer, on the scene of the crash/forced landing, he would almost certainly have spoken good if not fluent German.

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## pbehn (Sep 5, 2020)

stona said:


> If it was an Intelligence Officer, on the scene of the crash/forced landing, he would almost certainly have spoken good if not fluent German.


It is also possible that people heard what captured airmen said and remembered it, without understanding what was said, well enough to recount to an Intelligence officer later. My uncle was of that era and he had a head full of quotes, prayers poems and passages from books and the bible "learned wrote".

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## GreenKnight121 (Sep 11, 2020)

pbehn said:


> It is also possible that people heard what captured airmen said and remembered it, without understanding what was said, well enough to recount to an Intelligence officer later. My uncle was of that era and he had a head full of quotes, prayers poems and passages from books and the bible "learned wrote".


"Learned by rote" - learning by multiple repetitions to burn it into your memory.


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## pbehn (Sep 11, 2020)

GreenKnight121 said:


> "Learned by rote" - learning by multiple repetitions to burn it into your memory.


Well yes, but when you are accustomed to it you can remember just after hearing or reading once.


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## yosimitesam (Sep 13, 2020)

pbehn said:


> I read years ago that the British made a breakthrough in the "battle of the beams" when a crew member said to another "they wont find it" as they were taken away from a German bomber forced down, one of the police spoke German and the aircraft was taken down to the rivets to find "it".



It was overheard via a "bugged" room when 2 members of an aircraft from KGr100 (elite Luftwaffe night pathfinder group) were shot down and captured. The "it" was the X-Gerat bombing device (the follow-on to Knickbein.) It was built into a regular Lorentz electronic landing aid (common in most bombers) which was modified to be especially sensitive but otherwise look like a regular unit. R.V. Jones got wind of this and asked the post crash RAF investigator if there was anything unusual about the electronics in the downed aricraft and his reply was just that the Lorentz unit was "way more sensitive than any he had seen." This is why it was not obvious and one of the two captured Luftwaffe officers made that statement to the other. Jones' book (Most Secret War) has this episode in it. On several occasions, good intelligence was obtained by placing captured Germans in a room by themselves and then secretly "listening in" to their talk.

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