Date: 20th May 1942
Unit: 10 (Jabo) Staffel/Jagdgeschwader 26
Type: Messerschmitt Bf 109F-4/B
Werke/Nr. 7232
Code: 11 + (White)
Location: Beachy Head, Sussex.
Pilot: Unteroffizier Oswald Fischer POW (Born 15.12.1919 in Erfurt.)
REASON FOR LOSS:
This aircraft was one of two Bf 109F-4s seeking targets of opportunity in the Channel off Newhaven. Uffz Fischer caught a salvo of machine gun fire from a naval corvette vessel which he had attempted to bomb, being hit in his engine which rapidly began to overheat to a temperature of 160 deg C.
He chose to make a wheels-up landing on the cliffs at Beachy Head. This machine was later sent to RAE Farnborough for examination.
On the 21.08.43 the aircraft was delivered to No.1426 (Enemy Aircraft Flight). One of the cylinder blocks was damaged in the Beachy Head landing, but a replacement was obtained from the Middle East. F/Lt R. F. Forbes flew the aircraft at Collyweston on the 24th October, still in Luftwaffe markings. Three days later it had been painted in RAF colours and given the serial NN644, but it retained white 11 and bomb symbol. The aircrafts port wing and aileron where damaged when it ground looped on landing at Thurleigh, Bedfordshire on the 07.01.44. The Messerschmitt passed to the Enemy Aircraft Flight at Tangmere on 31.01.45, and went into store at No.47 MU (Maintenance Unit) Sealand on 01.11.45.
Oswald Fischer in flight overalls shortly after his forced-landing at Beachy Head
