I winged it with a fighter trophy

AS A seven-year-old boy in August 1940, I was witness to a dogfight high up in the clear sky over Southampton, which I watched from my bedroom window in Eastleigh. The circling contrails and the distant sound of gunfire were an exciting spectacle to behold. Suddenly, out of the melee, intermittent puffs of black smoke descended, lower and lower. Then I saw the aircraft passing left to right, at a shallow angle, in front of the tall pines on high ground a mile away. Knowing the area well, I took a guess as to where it might come down and was off, as fast as my little legs could take me. On reaching Leigh Road, I could see that the cattle fence was down, near the junction with Oakmount Road. The aircraft, a Messerschmitt ME 109, with the number 13, was sitting in the field, its wheels up. Walking around it, I noticed a loose piece hanging from one of the wings and, giving it a little waggle, it came away in my hand. It was what I know now to have been the starboard aileron balance weight strut (minus the weight) with a portion of the aileron attached, that had snagged on the wire fence. Off home with it I went. The plane was removed during the night and I have evidence that it was taken to Cunliffe Owens at Eastleigh airfield, repaired and flown for evaluation purposes — but was destroyed during a German daylight raid in September of that year. If only I had that strut now, it would be an impressive wartime memento, but I swapped it for a small steam engine that I could play with. Alfred W. Thorne, Southampton.