Broad Street Wrington at War 1939-45
by Mark Bullen

Evacuee Dennis Owers remembers some frightening experiences he had whilst staying with the Ansons at West Hay:

"The Ansons had a terrific air-raid shelter underneath their house, with lots of bunks in it. If you’re not used to confined spaces it was very claustrophobic. Every time there was an air raid Lady Anson used to come up and grab a couple of us, and her husband if he wasn’t on duty, and we used to go down. I was only about four years old and I was petrified to have to keep going down there. Sometimes we didn’t have time to go down there so we’d dive under the kitchen table with the maids.

One afternoon there was an air raid in Bristol and we were helping the head gardener, Martin Haynes, dig the garden. A Jerry aircraft, empty of bombs, which had come from Bristol, came down really low on us and we didn’t have time to move; the lot of us just froze. You could see the faces of the German bomber crew and luckily they just flew past us. The raids were frightening. There used to be a ditch along the side of the West Hay Road and every time we went to school mum and dad told us to jump into it if we heard an aeroplane and that’s what we used to do. We used to walk that stretch of road several times a day, going to school and then coming home to lunch.”

Amongst the fear and discomfort there were also some amusing incidents, again as recalled by Dennis Owers:

“ I can remember one evening when an air-raid was on, we were all in our bedroom – we had big blackout shutters at the Ansons. One of us woke up and our two bigger brothers were with us at the time. One was in the Home Guard and the other one must have been home on leave. They both had their guns at the time and we woke them up and told them there was someone outside. They went down with fixed bayonets and it was Sir Wilfred Anson checking all round the house. The two of them ganged up on him in the back garden and said “friend or foe”. Sir Wilfred spoke and of course it frightened him as much as it did my two brothers. We got back to sleep and laughed about it the next morning.”

One of the most extraordinary events of the war unfolded at Lulsgate airfield in July 1941, when an undamaged German Junkers 88A bomber landed there in broad daylight!

The Lulsgate Operations book for July 1941 gave a brief account of the incident:

“ Of this, tradition says that the aircraft had misjudged its position because the pilot, who had been over Wales, thought the Bristol Channel was the English Channel, and so landed and lost his way. When he came to rest, some of the crew got out and went to make enquiries. At the time there was working on the aerodrome a mechanical digger.

The unfortunate German addressed himself to the driver, an astute fellow of discerning mind, who replied in broadest doric [dialect] at the same time signalling his mate to fetch the military guard. This was done with promptitude. Aircraft and crew became as clean and prized a captive as purple emperor fallen to etymological wiles in our English oak woods.”

Owing to news censorship, the local press made no mention of the event at the time, but in August 1945 the Weston Mercury was at last able to reveal all:

“ At 6.10am.on July 24 1941 people in Weston-super-Mare and district heard a plane flying comparatively low and apparently circling around. It was misty at the time and the few people who saw it and suggested it was a Nazi bomber were laughed to scorn, but they were right. A few moments after it had left the Weston area the plane landed at Lulsgate Bottom, Wrington.
It was the first time that a perfectly sound enemy plane had voluntarily landed in this country. Believe it or not the Nazi airmen thought they had landed in Northern France. It is now possible to tell the facts about this strange episode, which was not revealed at the time, though it was common knowledge among the local civil defence services, the Home Guard and the Special Constabulary.”
The reason why the censor clamped down on the facts at the at time was that the plane was a Junkers 88 of the latest type, possessing many gadgets that were regarded as Nazi secrets and the authorities were not anxious to let the Luftwaffe know that we had secured one of their newest patent aircraft intact.

It was a lucky capture but “the bird” nearly got away. When the Junkers dropped from the misty morning sky the airfield at Lulsgate was still under construction. Men were actually working on the runways when, to their astonishment, they saw the Junkers make a good landing.

The plane taxied along the unfinished runway and, if it had not been for a youth driving a tractor, who saw the blacked-out markings on the machine and drove his tractor across its path, causing it to swerve off the runway onto rough ground, thus making a quick getaway impossible, the unscratched prize might never have fallen into our hands.

The crew of four clambered out and the pilot, followed by his companions, went over to the men working on the runway. He asked in French what part of France it was and when he received the laughing reply that it was England, he drew his revolver and retreated towards the plane. As the crew were climbing into the plane however, the soldiers attached to the airfield arrived with sub-machine guns and the men gave themselves up and were marched to the guard house.
According to the local paper, the “Nazi” airmen were typical products of Hitler’s regime - sullen, braggart and uncommunicative, but it was eventually possible for the Intelligence Officer to get from them the story that they were returning from a bombing raid on Northern Ireland and Merseyside and had been flying over the sea out and home.

Owing to the mist and navigational errors, they mistook the Welsh coast for Cornwall and, having crossed the Bristol Channel, which they assumed was the English Channel, they landed on the first airstrip they could find. The engines were faultless and there was no lack of petrol.”