Ashburnham Crash Site
In the early hours of D-Day 6th June 1944 the skies were crammed full of aircraft supporting and participating in the Normandy landings. Flying out of RAF Boreham in Essex was The USAAF 394th Bombardment Group flying Martin B26 Marauders. The target for this bomber group was to bomb German defensive gun positions at Varreville in Normandy.
The huge number of aircraft in the skies over Southern England led to the inevitable possibility of a collision. This happened to aircraft of the 394th Bombardment Group. two of the B26 aircraft collided ot 0600, over Battle, East Sussex which led to the deaths of eleven of the twelve crewmen aboard the two aircraft.
The collision over Battle, East Sussex ---- B26 Marauder 42-107592 piloted by Lt Tommie Potts collided with B26 Marauder 42-96249 piloted by Lt Thomas Jenkins. Both aircraft sustained serious damage in the collision and crashed.
Lt Tommie Potts was the only airman to survive the collision.. Lt Potts later stated that he felt no distinct jar as one would expect to feel in a collision. He also said that after the collision his aircraft kept veering to the left and at one point was on its back. He instructed the Bombardier to jettison bombs and then gave the signal to abandon the aircraft. The crew had gone to the bomb bay and Lt Potts, assuming that the Bombardier had left the doors opened, waited for a minute, lowered the nose wheel and bailed out. The crew had worked feverishly to dump the high altitude bombs so that they would fall unexploded as the plane neared its crash landing. -- 42-107592 crashed at Whatlington Level and 42-96249 crashed at Ashburnham Place.
The collision has been examined by historians and there are a number of very interesting documents relating to the crash. The underlying feature of all of the accounts is that the crew of 42-107592 tried desperately to jettison the bombs and probably sacrificed their lives in doing so. The ejection of the bombs had, in my opinion, two distinctive effects. Firstly - when the aircraft crashed there was not a catastrophic explosion of the combined pay-load. Secondly - for every bomb that they managed to release the aircraft got slightly lighter and continued to fly for a short time longer - it missed the built up area of central Battle by a small margin --- had the bombs still been on board and the aircraft fully bomb laden it would have been heavier and crashed sooner with horrendous consequences for the population of Battle, East Sussex. When 42-96249 crashed at Ashburnham Place still fully bomb laden there was a catastrophic explosion.
The crews of the two aircraft were :
B26 Marauder 42-107592
Lt Tommie Potts ( survived )
Sgt George J Kyle
Lt Christian Burger
Lt Leroy A Dyer
Sgt James M Long
Sgt George W Williams
B26 Marauder 42-96249
Lt Thomas Jenkins
Lt Walter Winter
Sgt George S Rogers
Sgt William C Hoeb
Sgt Ralph D Parker
Sgt Edward F Bailey
By jettisoning the deactivated bombs before the crash, the town of Battle was spared what would have been a large explosion on its northern boundary. The crew therefore chose to ensure the safety of those on the ground above saving themselves.
Yet another piece of luck, after the 250kg bomb that failed to explode in the Abbey gatehouse, where the Canadians had 30 tons of TNT stored.
And for the record, Tommie Potts didn't actually bale out, the collision tore open the cockpit side and he was thrown out rather than jumped. There was no time to hold the plane steady for a minute, they both began to plunge right after the collision. The two crash sites are very close, but the bombs aboard exploded with sufficient force as to shatter practically every pane of glass in Ashburnham Place. After the hurricane in 1987, a machine gun was found lodged in the upper branches of a tree
Thanks to Sussex History Forum for their work, without their research, I would not be able to support the details.