WHEN THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN CAME TO WENVOE
September brings the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. While the events are mostly associated with the southeast of England, the Vale of Glamorgan played an important part in the victory over the Luftwaffe. The Vale villages, including Wenvoe, also found themselves directly affected.
On 31st March 1943, a Supermarine Spitfire on a vital training mission from RAF Llandow crashed near Old Wallace Farm on the outskirts of Wenvoe. Approaching Wenvoe, the pilot, Sgt John Wilson Craighead, suddenly noticed that the plane’s fuel was very low. He decided to attempt an emergency landing but unfortunately hit a dense bank of fog. Seeing a gap he opted for a forced landing. Unfortunately, the area was particularly littered with electricity pylons and telegraph poles and after choosing what appeared to be a suitable field, the plane struck a pole partially hidden with ivy within a thick hedgerow. This sheared off one of the wings, spinning the aircraft into the adjacent field. Only slightly injured, Sgt Craighead was able to extract himself from the plane and get help from nearby Wallace Farm.
Like many others who trained in the Vale for fighting the Luftwaffe, Sgt Craighead was a ‘kiwi’ from the Royal New Zealand Airforce. There were pilots from many nationalities trained at St Athan, Llandow and Stormy Down. They came from all over the Commonwealth and many other countries such as Poland. There were even a handful of American pilots, one who survived after colliding with another Spitfire from the same unit, ditching into the sea off St Athan in February 1943.
Pilots were in many ways more important than the Spitfire planes. It was vital for pilots to practise for all manner of scenarios, particularly dog-fights. This made the training difficult and dangerous. With the average life expectancy of a pilot at only four weeks and an urgent demand for new recruits, the RAF cut the training time from six months to just two weeks. Some recruits saw action with as little as nine hours experience. Not all Llandow and St Athan pilots survived training crashes. An RAF Spitfire flown by 22-year-old Sgt DG White, dived out of formation from high altitude and crashed near the Greendown Inn, St George’s Super-Ely. Sgt White was killed and buried in his hometown of Paignton. On 6th February 1943, a Spitfire broke up in the air over Bonvilston, with some wreckage reaching fields in Pendoylan. Flying Officer Neville Alexander Thomas Fleming unfortunately lost his life and was buried in Llantwit Major Cemetery alongside many others. Another was Sergeant Marion Arthur Plomteaux killed when his Spitfire spun into the ground near Marcross during a practice dogfight.
While Landow and St Athan are well known, there were also two other similar training bases in South East Wales. RAF Stormy Down, which was located near Pyle, Bridgend, opened in 1940. ‘Stormy’ began as an armament training school for the RAF and when they left firstly the French and later American forces were stationed there. Flying ceased in August 1944 due to the dangerous grass landing strip. On the site of Swansea Airport was RAF Fairwood Common. Constructed on what was basically a bog and used for pilot training, it fulfilled a variety of military roles from June 1941 until the end of the war.
If you are interested in aircraft, you might like to visit the South Wales Aviation Museum in St Athan. The museum prides its commitment to a hands-on approach for visitors. You can, for example, clamber into the cockpit of a Tornado and get inside an old Royal Navy Sea King helicopter. You can also get up close to the cockpit of a Russian MiG 29 as well as the flight deck of a Boeing 707. SWAM volunteers can explain the story behind the museum, the planes and other exhibits such as World War II memorabilia. The museum, which has a café and gift shop, is currently open at weekends 10am to 4:30pm, although it is hoped to extend this for special events. Now well established, the museum relies on donations from visitors for funding (suggested £5 per person
