Bournemouth At War / ST IVES HOTEL PLANE CRASH Traditional Cache

Bournemouth has a great history. I have documented many famous people, major events and occurrences in previous geocaching series highlighting the history of Bournemouth. This series focuses on many of the key incidents and stories in the town when Bournemouth was at war. A complete list of all the caches in this series are bookmarked.

With the war getting deadlier, warnings of enemy bombing became more frequent in 1943. In January alone, 18 times the sirens sounded, but no bombs were dropped. In May that year, however, the town suffered some ferocious bombing.



On 23rd May 1943, a Canadian bomb aimer was strolling across the park from The Winter Gardens on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. There were no warning sirens, however, he saw his first enemy aircraft, a Focke Wulf 190s. Feeling exposed he ran for shelter in the entrance of a shoe shop. Whilst sheltering, he saw an Australian airman, identified for their darker uniform, hit and spun round with a leg missing. The Focke Wulf 190s caused severe devastation on this day, with the bombing of the Metropole Hotel and a crash into the St Ives Hotel on Grove Road.

The Echo reported that a Focke-Wulf 190 was shot down over the town by a Spitfire, however, this was much later claimed that the pilot, Uffz Schmidz, had been shot down by a Bofors gun near the Pier, not by the Spitfire. The plane crashed onto the flat roof of the small St Ives Hotel, 34 Grove Road, with its bomb still attached. Schmidz was killed, and the crash also killed two people in the next hotel. The plane caught fire, gutting the Hotel. Luckily the bomb failed to explode and was removed by the Bomb Disposal Squad.

Also caught up in the day’s events was Mr Ward who worked nearby at The Heathlands. Below is an extract of his account of that fateful day:

At 1.00 p.m. just at the entrance to the Heathlands, the ground shook and there was the thump of an explosion with the familiar smell of cordite, which I knew well from the previous three years in London. Looking instinctively to the left there was a pall of black smoke and ash rising in the air. The Metropole had been hit. At almost the same moment two young ATS girls came dashing up from a small hotel a few yards along Grove Road. I think the establishment was called the St Ives Hotel and I believe it was St Ives’ turn to keep an eye on my that day. The girls’ story, as far as I could make out was that they had taken an early lunch to keep an eye on the hotel until the rest of the girls came back. They said “an aeroplane has landed on our roof, with the man still inside it. Could you get it and him down as we are frightened to go back in, and there are things we need”. Why girls always need so many things I’ll never know, when all a lad needs is a comb, a clean handkerchief and a few bob. However, sure enough there was an aeroplane on the flat roof of the small hotel. To all appearances it looked to have been placed there most carefully and was completely intact. There was exploding ammunition and stray wisps of smoke and the pilot staring straight ahead. At the moment a fireman came up towing an auxiliary fire pump and said “I think you’ll need this” and asked if I knew how to handle it, which fortunately I did, and off he went advising me not to go into the building, just play the hose all over the building, don’t point the jet straight at the aircraft, you might rupture the fuel tank. This did seem to do the trick and I thought I had the fire under control. Then, about a dozen Canadian airmen turned up and asked if they could help. We’re really in the war now, aren’t we, isn’t it exciting. I think they said they had been in England a week. I turned the hose and pump over to two of them and explained that the girls wanted to get some of their belongings out and we would try to enter the building, in spite of the fireman’s warning to keep out.

Now it is not in my nature to attempt anything remotely dangerous, having twice before been in an aircraft which had caught fire. So, I approached the problem with extreme caution. The building was extensive, but only two storeys, with a flat asphalted roof. We went inside downstairs wanted about, with instructions from the girls and we recovered the items they wanted from upstairs.

Our Canadian colleagues enquired what next. The contents of the hotel, which had about twenty girl residents and appeared to be furnished as pre-war and seemed to be good quality, possibly antique. I said that if the fire gets hold it will go up in flames. Should we take the furniture outside then, they said. There was a medium sized lawn outside and our Canadian friends worked with great enthusiasm and pulled all the furniture outside, including, I might add, a grand piano.

Always being somewhat of a negative persuasion, I applauded their enthusiasm, but was fearful that the owner or agent of the hotel would turn up and tell use to put it all back again if it came on to rain. I had noticed it was getting rather warn upstairs, and suggested we had better go outside and review our position. On humanitarian grounds I thought perhaps we could find a ladder and check if there were any signs of life in the pilot.

No sooner had we all got out when there was a crash and part of the roof collapsed, revealing that the aircraft was a Focke-Wulf 190, not only that, but we could see its bomb load was still intact and everyone could have been blown to pieces. My enthusiasm for the pilot’s welfare instantly evaporated. He shouldn’t have come here in the first place. After the raid I learnt from the official report that the raid was a reprisal for a Baedeker raid on a German seaside resort which we had bombed, either because of a mistake or on purpose The report did not say.”
Source


A minute of intense devastation in Bournemouth’s bloodiest air raid
The Metropole Hotel bombed shortly after the plane crash at St Ive’s Hotel