mark

My father was a B 17 bomber pilot in ww 2 and flew 28 missions from Dec 1943 to April 1944. He was stationed at Great Ashfield, but crash landed into a pill box at Detling. I have 3 photo's of the crash and would like to have more information/photo's of Detling and locate the pill box if it is still there. Also, Is there a location on site where crash debrie would have been dumped?

Hello - is this the crash:

B-17 tail number: 39901 (385th BG, "Star Dust") crash landed at Detling, Kent following flak damage during rade on V-site in Calais Feb 13, 1944.

Tommy

Mark,

Welcome to AiX and your search for information.

Detling airfield was never upgraded to include paved runways and so remained a grass airfield throughout WW2. It was provided with many defence pillboxes, mainly the Type 27, located in a circle around the outside perimeter and many of these survive. In order to establish which pillbox was hit during the crash we would need to have the crash location.

If you look at Detling in Google Earth (the current view is good) and 'turn on' Photos in the Layer menu, you will see a good picture of a Type 27 PB. On the sat view they look like a 6 sided nut (fastener!). Once you can see at least one in GE, go to AiX Detling thread and posted in there is a fairly sharp 1940s B & W vertical of Detling in which you can pick out a number of PBs and relate them to the current sat view.

So, there is a good chance the PB that was hit survives today. But, beware, Detling also had some retractable type PBs which were normally flush with the landing ground surface. If one of these was 'up' when the B17 landed then....

The RAF had special teams of crash recovery personnel who would have recovered as much wreckage as possible and trucked it to a central location for disposal. Only minor fragments should have been disposed of on site but, that was not always the case in wartime:)

Good Luck