Downside School - Air Disaster

Air Disaster

On Saturday 15 May 1943, during a cricket match between the school and an army team, two Hurricane fighter planes appeared over the playing fields at around 3 p.m. They proceeded to circle the fields, performing manoeuvres as they did so, an eye-witness describing them "diving over the field and banking steeply". In what would be the final pass, at around 3.20 p.m., both planes flew across the cricket ground at an extremely low altitude, and then climbed rapidly to clear the tall fir trees bordering the field. The second plane appeared to clip the trees with its tail and nose-dived straight into the ground, crashing and bouncing, the burning debris finally coming to rest amongst the schoolboys spectating the cricket match from an embankment. The pilot and nine people on the ground were killed, with 15 others injured, 10 of them seriously.

Read more about this topic:  Downside School

Famous quotes containing the words air and/or disaster:

    People who live together naturally catch the looks and air of one another and without having one feature alike, they contract a something in the whole countenance which strikes one as a resemblance.
    Frances Burney (1752–1840)

    The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.
    Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)