Although the Battle of Britain is now said to have started on 10 July 1940, the Luftwaff e was quite active before then, writes Chris Goss. On 1 July 1940, three German aircraft were lost off Middlesbrough, their crews had the dubious honour of being the first PoWs of July 1940.
During the night of 30 June 1940, a Heinkel He 115 seaplane of 3 Staffel/Küstenfliegergruppe 106, flown by Oberfeldwebel Rudolf Worms, took off from Borkum, one of a number of aircraft carrying out mine-laying off the British coast. However, at 02:00, one of the engines failed and the pilot ditched 30 miles east of Whitby. The crew – which included Leutnant zur See Gottrfried Schröder and Unteroffizier Siegfried Soest – managed to get into a dinghy and were eventually rescued and landed at Grimsby after being in the leaking craft for 28 hours.
However, the demise of the He 115 had not gone unnoticed by the Luftwaffe and at first light, a He 59 air-sea rescue floatplane of Seenotflugkommando 3, flown by Unteroffizier Ernst-Otto Ielsen, took off from Amsterdam and headed for Middlesbrough. Its observer, Leutnant Hans-Joachim Fehske, recalls what happened when they arrived in the search area: “We arrived at the correct latitude …
