Time Team

Wierre-Effroy, France - One Of The First Spitfires Lost In France (7x3)

Date de diffusion: Jan 16, 2000

One of the first spitfires lost in France. It was on 23 May 1940 that a young English pilot climbed into the cockpit of his Spitfire to join a formation of aircraft flying across the Channel to help defend troops retreating in the face of the Nazi advance. Paul Klipsch, aged 24, had never flown in a combat mission before; he was never to do so again. The young pilot was shot down over northern France. He had become one of the first of the 1,500 Royal Air Force pilots who were to give their lives during the early period of the Second World War. The RAF's combat report recorded simply that he had been 'Killed in Action'. The place where his plane came down, in a farmer's field outside the small French village of Wierre-Effroy, near Boulogne, has always been known. Two brothers, Auguste and René Mierlot, had seen it shot down by a Messerschmitt 110, at about 6pm that May evening. They remembered it well because half an hour later German troops entered their village. Despite the Nazi presence, local people retrieved Paul Klipsch's body from the remains of his aircraft and buried him in the village cemetery. His grave, now marked with an RAF headstone, remains there to this day. But while the time and place of this young pilot's death had long been known, we still knew little about how and why his Spitfire crashed. Time Team decided to see what could be revealed.