Google and ebay
David Ludlow knew his grandfather was forced to crash-land his aeroplane in France during World War 2, but didn’t know the details until he searched online
Sunday 19 May 1940 was a warm day in Congy, France. Eliane Desbrosse, aged 17, was standing outside her friend’s house around midday when a sudden noise made her jump and a British plane came down low and fast, landing in a field on the outskirts of the village. The pilot was my grandfather, George Henry Ebert. Eighty-one years later, I stood in the same field next to Eliane - now 98 - as she relived the event.
My grandfather survived that crash, but was killed on 6 January 1944 when his Lancaster bomber was shot down during a mission to Stettin in Poland. I’ve always wanted to learn more about the crash in France. I found some details from the National Archives
( www.nationalarchives.gov.uk), but I had greater success using Google.
I find it best to use a combination of keywords, so I searched for both ‘G.H. Ebert’ and ‘George Henry Ebert’, adding ‘RAF’ each time. I found details of his final mission, as well as information about an incident in France in 1940, when he was flying a Fairey Battle P5328.
Google also led me to Felsted Remembers ( www.felstedremembers.
uwclub.net), where historian Robert Stone pays tribute to those named on the war memorial in the Essex village
of Felsted, among them my grandfather: www.snipca.
com/40439. I contacted Robert to give him some information and images, including a photo of my grandfather’s DFC medal (pictured below left).
As I was researching my grandfather, Vincent Desbrosse - Eliane’s grandson – was trying to find out who flew the plane that crash-landed in Congy in 1940. Research led him to a file in the UK’S National Archives naming the pilot as GH Ebert. According to the file, the plane had been hit by flak while bombing the advancing Germans, and my grandfather had force-landed to get help for observer Tom Jones, who was badly injured (and died later that day).
Vincent found me through Robert Stone’s website. He asked me if I’d like to meet his grandmother to hear a first-hand account of the incident. I said yes, and we met last September.
Since that visit, I learned that my grandfather’s plane was taken 425 miles away to Chateau Bougon, Nantes, for repair, but was abandoned when the Germans overran France. I knew that many of the advancing Germans took photos of the abandoned planes, so I wondered whether I could find pictures of my grandfather’s Fairey Battle.
At the airfield, the Fairey P5328 was placed next to a Hurricane P2959. A Google Image search ( www.snipca. com/40440) revealed several photos of the plane, but I used the basic Google Search, too, because it finds more results.
I then turned to ebay to see if anyone was selling the original photos. A clever ebay feature lets you save a search, and alerts you when someone lists an item that fits your criteria. To set this up, I logged into my ebay account, then searched for the term I wanted (‘Fairey Battle photo’) and clicked ‘Save this search’ (see screenshot above). Now, when a new photo appears, ebay sends me an email containing details of the item.
To find my grandfather’s exact plane I had to use the specific search terms ‘Fairey P5328’ and ‘Hurricane P2959’. I now have a handful of photos, taken by different people from different angles, of the very plane my grandfather flew on that day in 1940.