Heinkel HeIII near Patrington, Hull.
On the night of 8th / 9th May 1941 the crew of this aircraft had been tasked with bombing Sheffield and had set out from their base of Villacoublay. As they
approached the Yorkshire Coast the aircraft was spotted by the crew of a patrolling Defiant of 255 Squadron based at Kirton in Lindsey and was attacked. The
Heinkel was severely damaged
near Hull dived into the ground some 800 yards north east of Patrington Railway Station at 01.30hrs on 9th May 1941. The pilot was able to bale out just prior to impact
and became a PoW after landing in an area of woodland near the resulting crash site. The four other airmen in the aircraft were sadly killed, either in the attack or
the resulting crash which occured close to the Patrington to Withernsea railway line. The aircraft was totally destroyed in the incident and the destruction must have
been compounded by the explosion of the bombload it was carrying. The aircraft had crashed into the edge of a field into one of a number of land drainage ditches and created a
large crater. In the years after the War the ditch was filled in and more recently the crater in the field was also filled in but before this was done the remains of one
of the aircraft engines was discovered in the hole. A large section of fuselage came to rest on the edge of the railway embankment.
Research locally into this incident revealed that the Luftwaffe pilot returned to Patrington many years after crash at the age of roughly ninety. He met
the owner of a house in the woodland he landed in back in 1941 and presented them with a case of wine from the vineyard he ran in Germany.
Pilot - Uffz Helmut Teschke. Baled out and became a PoW.
Observer - Gefr Willi London. Buried Brandesburton churchyard, Yorkshire.
Wireless Operator - Gefr Johannes Kaminski. Buried Brandesburton churchyard, Yorkshire.
Mechanic - Gefr Hans-J Steiglitz. Buried Brandesburton churchyard, Yorkshire.
Gunner - Gefr Hermann Decker. Buried Brandesburton churchyard, Yorkshire.
At Brandesburton Churchyard are the graves of the four Luftwaffe airmen killed in this incident at Patrington.
In August 2011 air historian Dick Barton spent a long time in the Patrington area researching this incident and found a witness to the scene of the crash. He kindly set up
a visit to the crash site with the landowner for us and myself, Dick, Albert Pritchard and Ken Reast were able to locate small fragments of the aircraft on the surface at
the crash site later in the month after harvest. Having located the former drainage ditch a small number of pieces were found either side of this and in what would have
been the ditch banking we found some much larger pieces of the aircraft. Sadly none had any identification markings on them. The aircraft crashed on what is the strip
of un-ploughed stubble heading away from the camera and the pilot landed in the woodland to the right on the photograph above. We also paid our respects at the grave
of an Allied airman washed ashore locally and buried in the village cemetery just two months before this incident.
The drainage ditch followed the field boundary across this photograph, Dick's witness recalled that the field at the back of the ditch was littered with bits
of the aircraft after the crash.
Small fragments of the aircraft located on the surface.
