Who bombed Cunliffe Owen? The intriguing story of the bombing in 1940 of the aircraft factory in Southampton
Andy Jones, former director at Solent Sky Museum,
Southampton, kept the audience at our memory sharing café enthralled as he
shared the results of his research into the bombing of Cunliffe Owen during the
Second World War. On 11th September 1940 the factory took a direct
hit from German bombers and 52 people lost their lives. It is a lesser-known
story than the bombing of the Supermarine later that month and one that our
project has been exploring through the memories of Helen, whose father was one
of those killed.
Andy and his team have been researching the story for a film
due to be broadcast later this month and which looks at the mystery of a German
bomber known to have been inside the factory at the time of the bombing. Andy
showed photographs of the Heinkel at the factory taken before and after the
raid and explained his efforts to identify the plane and through it find out
more about its journey to Southampton. He has since pieced together the plane’s
extraordinary journey from Paris to southern England where it was shot down and
landed on the South Downs near Bramber in West Sussex. Surreptitously
photographed by a local man as it lay on the top of the downs and later on a
lorry trailer on the A27 near Bursledon, the plane was transported to Cunliffe
Owen. Tracing its journey after the bombing, Andy discovered that it was taken
to Reading before being transferred to Cowley for scrapping.
Andy’s research has led to more questions than answers – the
presence of the Heinkel 111 inside the aircraft factory during the early months
of the war raises puzzling questions – how it came to be there, why it was
there, and whether the bombing raid was targeted at destroying it. Other
intriguing aspects of the story point to the lack of an air-raid siren warning
of the approaching German bombers and how they were not spotted before they
reached the factory. Given the patchy and inaccurate reporting in the early
days of the war, there are several conflicting versions of the details – which
direction they came from, the altitude they were flying at, whether they were
aiming to bomb the factory or released the bombs to reduce weight before
returning across the Channel.
The film is due to be released soon with the intention that
responses from other researchers and people with memories of the bombing may
come forward to fill in the gaps in the story and help solve the mystery. For
the Ford Transition project, the links made with Andy have added an extra
dimension to our own research into the history of the old Ford site.
For more information
on Andy’s film:
Website: http://planehunters.com/
Twitter: @planehunters https://twitter.com/planehunters
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/planehunters
Footage of the aftermath of bombing raid at Cunliffe Owen
(via forum below)
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