A FEW MINUTES before midnight on Sunday 4th May 1941, the people of Bourne were woken by the sound of gunfire and the throb of aircraft engines as two planes battled it out over the town.

The Second World War had broken out 18 months before and the German Luftwaffe was engaged in a massive bombing campaign against sensitive British targets in the industrial cities such as Sheffield, Birmingham and Newcastle. On this occasion, an enemy Junkers 88 was bound for the East Midlands, probably Grantham which was home to several munitions factories producing weapons and other military equipment for the armed services, when it was intercepted by a Royal Air Force Bristol Beaufighter and a dogfight ensued.

The Junkers loosed a number of incendiary bombs over the town but they failed to inflict any damage and after several minutes of combat, with flashes of machine gun fire lighting up the night sky, the Junkers was badly damaged and the pilot injured and the plane nose-dived earthwards with flames streaming from the fuselage.

It crashed on the Butcher’s Arms alongside the Bourne Eau at No 32 Eastgate, demolishing the public house, setting fire to the ruins and killing seven people inside.

Among those first on the scene was the late Ernie Robinson who was on duty with a team of volunteers from the town's Civil Defence unit based at the Old Grammar School in South Road that had been specially trained to deal with air raid casualties. In 1998, then aged 97, he recalled the scene when they arrived: “We heard the plane coming down”, he said. “It was only on the other side of the Abbey Lawn and so we did not have far to go and we turned out immediately.

“It was a shambles, a real mess. Soldiers were billeted in Eastgate and one of them who had been on guard duty had been killed. There was not a lot we could do to help and it was really a case of clearing up as best we could. We found two of the German aircrew and carried off their bodies to the stables behind the Six Bells public house in North Street. The police station was next door in those days and they took over as soon as we arrived and we left them searching through their clothing to find some identification. Bourne was usually peaceful during the war years but it certainly was not on that occasion which turned out to be one of the busiest nights of the war.”

The Junkers had a crew of four and three of them baled out but two were killed when their parachutes failed to open and their bodies were found some distance away. The pilot, Adam Becker, aged 28, had remained at the controls and was buried in the wreckage of the inn where the aircraft had embedded itself in the foundations. The other two who lost their lives were Reinhold Kitzelmann, aged 22, radio operator, and Karl J Focke, aged 22, observer.

A third crew member, the rear gunner, Rudolf Dachsesel, survived. He landed by parachute south of the town near Northorpe and was slightly injured but gave himself up to the Home Guard next day after walking into Bourne along South Road. He later returned with a police escort to recover a revolver he had hidden at the roadside a few yards from Baldock’s Mill.

The body of the pilot, Adam Becker, was found after extensive digging by the rescue services and all three of the bomber crew who had been killed were buried in the town cemetery the following Thursday after a short graveside service conducted by the Vicar of Bourne, the Rev Charles Horne. In 1959, the War Graves Commission arranged for their exhumation and reburial at a war memorial cemetery at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire.

Engineering experts from the Ministry of Defence arrived next day and removed what was left of the aircraft for workshop examination but they did not recover everything and it is believed that one of the engines and other parts of the wings and fuselage still lie on the bottom of the Bourne Eau.

The couple who ran the public house were killed in the crash. They were the landlord, Charles Edward Lappage, aged 63, and his wife Fanny Elizabeth, aged 59. Also killed were two relatives who were visiting, Mrs Lappage's sister, Mrs Minnie Gertrude Cooper, aged 62, and her daughter, Mrs Violet Frances Jackson, aged 29, who had only been married for a fortnight, her husband George, a fitter with the RAF, having been posted to Egypt a few days before. All four were buried together in Grantham cemetery.

The soldiers who were killed were all serving with the Loyal Regiment (North Lancashire) based at Grimsthorpe Castle although some platoons were billeted at various locations throughout Bourne, including Eastgate. They were Lieutenant Harold Schofield, aged 28, Private Harrison Mackean, aged 33, and Private Clifford James, aged 29, who was fatally injured and died in hospital at Sleaford a few days later. Six other soldiers were hurt in the incident but all recovered from their injuries and returned to duty.

During the war, salvage teams had no time to retrieve debris after such incidents and so the hole was filled in and the site of the Butcher's Arms levelled. It remained derelict until after the war when it was bought for a garage development by the late Jack Edmund Lovell (1929-2005) of Riverside Motors that opened in 1959.

Five years later, in September 1964, he was expanding the business with the installation of new underground petrol storage tanks when a digger that had been brought in to excavate the necessary holes to accommodate them unearthed a 1,000 lb. unexploded bomb eight feet below the surface, buried so deeply in the ground that its presence was undetected when the crater caused by the plane crash had been covered over and left 23 years before. The police were alerted and the area cordoned off for the night while residents in Eastgate spent many anxious hours fearing that it might explode and some even went to sleep with friends and relatives as a safety precaution.

The following morning at 3 am, a squad arrived from RAF Newton near Nottingham and loaded the bomb on to a lorry and took it away for disposal together with several clips of live ammunition, electrical wiring and a fuel pipe from the aircraft that had also been unearthed.

After Jack retired from business, the garage was demolished in 2001 and new homes built the following year now occupy the site but there is no indication of the tragedy that occurred there more than half a century ago. Memories of the disaster were revived in 1998 when a campaign was launched in Bourne to provide a lasting memorial to those who died, both German and British, in order that the younger generation might be reminded of the conditions that existed during those wartime days.

An engraved plaque to be financed by public subscription and placed in the Abbey Church was contemplated but interest waned and the idea of a memorial came to nothing.

NOTE: This article was published by The Local newspaper on Friday 17th March 2006.