Aerial Dogfight Over Tramore in WW2

My town Tramore is situated in a quiet and peaceful corner of Ireland and in the course of WW2 was not massively impacted by what was going on in the rest of the globe. Men and women had been conscious of the war and meals was rationed but life continued unaffected.

On Sunday morning 23rd of August 1942 items have been to receive substantially diverse, as a lot of townsfolk created their way to 10am mass at the neighborhood church they heard loud noise from a German aircraft getting chased by two British spitfires. Neighborhood People today had to dive to security as bullets rained down on the street as the Junker decreased altitude substantially and came beneath fire.

The German plane a Junkers 88 taking fire from the British spitfires force landed in a field close to Carriglong. The action observed more than Tramore Bay, St Otterans Terrace and the Racecourse was portion of a series of substantially bigger events that began quite a few hours earlier.

In a smaller airfield outdoors of Paris 4 German Luftwaffe airmen: Paul Stormer (Pilot), Karl Hund, Gottfried Berndt and Josef Reiser took off on a reconnaissance mission to receive information about Belfast Harbour in Northern Ireland. The Junkers 88 flew along the east coast of Ireland and was spotted by several lookout boxes and sooner or later also by British radar that scrambled readily available Spitfires to intercept.

The 1st spitfire on the scene chased the Junkers 88 inland more than Co Meath and in the aerial fight took a hit and crashed to the ground in flames. The pilot Officer Boleslaw Sauwiak died later from his injuries in hospital.

Not long immediately after Sauwiak crashed his plane two more spitfires arrived on the scene from North Ireland. They chased the plane southward but soon after operating out of ammunition and fuel had to retreat. The Junker headed its course towards Waterford flying more than Kildare and Kilkenny on its way back to France. After more than Waterford two more spitfires joined the fight this time from Wales causing the plane to force land in Tramore.

A nearby farmer seeing the plane crash on his land ran out to assistance, he was held at gun point by the 4 Luftwaffe males and after he calmed them down brought them back to the farmhouse exactly where they have been provided a complete Irish breakfast. Later that day the Irish Army arrested the males and brought them to the Curragh Camp exactly where they had been interned.

One of the Officers a lot of years later returned to Tramore to see once again the big bay more than which his plane crashed.

This short article was place collectively immediately after reading the book Tramore of Long Ago by Andy Taylor and World-wide-web Sources.

My name is Abbygail Wood and if you would like to read more about the History of Tramore then you should really verify out the Tramore neighborhood web-site.