Imagine this...

KB724 ************ C/N #37025 ****** code.. VR-K King
Assigned to #419 Squadron 1.5.44. On 4/5 Jul.44 a raid to Villeneuve (P)P/O H.Smith were attacked by Ju88 and enemy aircraft was shot down. 27.8.44 engines cut out on take-off at Middleton St George; aircraft crashed 1 1/2m E. of Appleton Wiske, Yorks, two engines failed. This was on an operation to a flying-bomb site Operation 'Crossbow'(Mimoyecques) by 6 8 Group. (P)WO L.H.McDonald crew, all survived but farmer gave the crew a tongue lashing for landing on his property. DBR 27.8.44; total of 298hrs

If it had happened today, said farmer would have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the aircraft had not only violated the earning potential of his land, disrupted his working schedule and caused physical and actual damage, but that he'd suffered traumatic stress as a result, which caused him to overstay his intended time in the village pub, which lead to him being less than sober which, in turn, caused him to fall of his donkey, when he landed in a ditch and got soaked in filthy ditch-water. He then arrived home very late, whereupon his wife, seeing the state he was in, berated him for ruining the new pair of trousers she'd bought him for Christmas, 1936, and threw a vase at him, which shattered on the wall. The broken vase, being an heirloom from her Great Grandmother, was the last straw, and the wife sued for divorce.
The farmer would win the case, and gain compensation and costs, for loss of earnings, damage to property, cleaning costs for clothes, compensation for loss of irreplaceable antiques, over-spending in the pub, cost of divorce, stress and damage to reputation caused by the latter, expenses for temporary accommodation caused by latter until such time as he could move in with Mavis, the bar maid at 'The Speckled Hen', and extraordinary expenses to cover the wedding to Mavis, as this had not been planned earlier in his life, and was as a direct result of the actions following the crash-landing of one of His Majesty's aircraft on his land.
The (then) Air Ministry would be faced with a compensation bill for somewhere in the region of £13,000,000, at today's valuation, and the farmer would have laughed all the way to the bank, as he was fed up with his (now ex) wife, and really p*ssed off with having to go out into those bl**dy awful, wet, muddy fields in all weathers!

A distinct possibility Terry...

Absolutely!

LMAO

You left out the part where the EPA steps in and spends 2 mil cleaning up the mess, and dumps the bill on the Air Ministry.....

Oh, yeah. And Greenpeace campaigning, and trying to sabotage RAF bases, due to the environmental impact, and National Trust and the RSPB up in arms because of the effect on the Cabbage White, and the nesting habits of the lesser spotted Pub Warbler Bird .............