Image by Daniël Brackx

• Spitfire BL423

• Leffinge - 1 april 1943/15 augustus 2003

• 41/ 91 Squadrons
  

In the German archives there is a file with reports from German recovery units who always made a detailed form in which they wrote down what they found in the wreckage of Allied planes.

On April 4, 1943, such a unit had to go to a village called Leffinge, near Ostend, to investigate the crash location of a Spitfire which came down on April 1st. The Germans must have been disappointed, because in the report it is written that almost the whole aircraft disappeared in marshy grounds, they even could not find out the serial of the plane. By matching the losses of Fighter Command on April 1, 1943, we were sure that this was the Spitfire F/O Reginald Hoare flew on that day. He was flying a shipping recce when due to unknown reasons he had to bale out from his aircraft. He became a POW.

F/O Reginald Hoare

So Friday, August 15, we gathered in the field where Spitfire BL423 came down. It took us many years, to find the exact spot and to convince the owner of the land to carry on such an investigation, in which a heavy 21-ton crane is involved. But that morning, we had good hopes because our detection specialist's instrument showed a huge amount of metal in the ground. But soon, at 8 AM, after digging about 100m² of earth, it turned out his metal detector went wrong because of mineralization (iron in the clay layer).
We were a bit desperate, because this was the wrong spot in a field of about 1 acre. But we decided to carry on, and at about 5 PM we found another spot. The crane, which we had hired 'till 6 PM, dug a hole and it turned out to be a lost part of a farming machine. However, under that piece there were some small fragments of aluminium. Our hopes were raising, and when the crane scraped another layer of clay away, we had the distinctive smell of aviation fuel in our noses. That rusty part of a machine had led us towards the wreckage of our Spitfire.

We went to a depth of about 3 meters. Soon we were able to reconstruct why the Spitfire went so deep. Eyewitnesses told us the plane came straight trough the clouds with an enormous speed, diving vertically into a marshy meadow. By impact, the Rolls Royce Merlin and the armament (4 Browning and two Hispano cannons) immediately smashed in the soft soil. The arms went like a spear 'till two meters depth. At the moment they "left" the wing structure, both wings clipped along the fuselage and were trailed in the hole the engine had made some split seconds before.
At a depth of about 3 metres, we started a battle against the water, a struggle one can not win when the coastline is only 1 mile away. But with the huge crane, we were able to pull the wreckage to the surface.

Although everything was broken into smaller pieces, the condition of the material was brand new. There is no corrosion, the aluminium was shining in the sun just like 60 years ago, it looked like time stood still. This is because in the clay, there was no oxygen. We had three jeep trailers with us, on which all the fragments were loaded. It was a exhausting, but most rewarding day.

The next day, our team immediately started cleaning all the parts, to avoid the clay becoming sticky. This is a list of interesting parts we have found : intact tail wheel unit (the air is still in it, you can put it on another Spitfire and take off), plate aluminium with the fin flash still visible, radio, oxygen bottles, armour plating, fragments of the leather cushion of the seat, throttle and airscrew controls, gun sight, several cockpit instruments, one fragment of rudder pedal, basis of the control column, two Hispano 20mm cannons, three 303 Browning’s, Rolls Royce Merlin in a fantastic condition (carter broken, but even the hand painted numbers of the ground crew still visible) and prop hub. And besides that, countless fragments of wings, fuselage, structure. So now we have a giant jig saw which will keep us busy for some time.
The engine, cockpit artefacts and armament was put on display at the Open door at a local airfield. As the recovery operation of Friday was mentioned in the national press the next day, a lot of people came to the meeting to look at the pieces. Needless to say, the vast majority of them were amazed by what they saw. That whole Sunday we were busy explaining to them how we discovered the plane and where all those instruments and parts were used for.

We found the plane, and wondered if we'd ever find the pilot. With the help of the Internet we were able to trace Mr. Reginald Hoare, now 85 years old. The story of his life is worth telling.

Having lost his father in the last month of the First World War, he had to have a log amputated. But his tin replacement didn't stop him playing polo and hockey (in goal) and taking part in seamanship activities.
When the Second World War began he tried to join the RAF, "but they weren't interested until after the losses of the Battle of Britain. I joined a Spitfire squadron at Tang mere, N° 41 Sqn.
As Douglas Bader once discovered, that thin leg had its advantages. Under fire on one sortie, Reginald Hoare hear d a thing and looked down to see a bullet lodged in it.

But on April 1st, 1943, his luck ran out, when he had to bale out over Ostend. Nearing the ground, he heard shooting. "Naturally, I feared the worst but, fortunately, it was only a few farmers shooting rabbits !"
Nevertheless, he was captured by the Germans and taken to Stalag Luft III, where his room was next to the tunnel that was the subject of the film The Great Escape.
"We had seventeen Canadian mining engineers, which was a good start. There were eight of us to each room. In the corner there was a stove on a square brick plinth which was hollow, so we removed the tiles and set them in a trapdoor. The stove was moved whilst red hot and put on a special metal base. If a German entered the hut, we closed the trap, concealing it with quick drying powdered milk and soot. The tunnel had lights and a small railway to haul the diggers to the workface.

"Outside, I and several others sat reading. If we blew our nose, the signal would be passed on and the tunnel shut down. Eventually, 83 escaped and three, all perfect German speakers, got home. Hitler gave orders to shoot fifty - my best friend, the son of the then Permanent Under Secretary of State was among them.
By the way, for anyone who saw the movie, there were no Americans in our compound. But, of course, the Americans paid for the movie."

After the war, Reginald Hoare worked for the Family Bank before doing a restorations. There after, he set up his own account.