The First Plane Downed in the Battle of Britain

While going through some stuff that my parents gave me, or that I inherited from my grandparents I found the 1955 Centenary Supplement to the Daily Telegraph.

Tucked inside was a newspaper article, from the Essex Chronicle, Friday October 31, 1941.

The story under the photo reads as follows:

On the night of June 18 1940, after the Battle of Dunkirk, Mr Eden, the Secretary for War, called editors to the War Office and announced that in the belief of the government, the Battle of Britain would begin that very night, heavy bombing being anticipated.

This duly occurred and that night seven Nazi bombers were brough down, two of them in Essex. The first was at Chelmsford, an incident recorded in the picture which we print here; it fell in the garden of Bishopscourt, the residence of the Bishop of Chelmsford.

The amazing thing is that the same fighter pilot secured both these ‘planes. Shortly after his first success at Chelmsford he saw another German aircraft held by searchlight beams over the Thames Estuary and attacked it at once, with immediate success.

Both the machines were Heinkels.

The picture, which is published now for the first time, and is of obvious historic as well as dramatic interest shows the ‘plane lying in the garden of Bishopscourt after it was shot down. Warnings were sounded at 11.10p.m., and dawn was breaking nearly four hours later when the “all clear” was sounded.

The crew of the German bomber numbered four. One came down by parachute near Writtle, arrested by a policeman, and taken to hospital. The other three were killed in the wreck and subsequently buried in a corner of the Chelmsford Corporation Cemetary in Writtle Road.

The Bishop of Chelmsford himself officiated at the burial ceremony.