The German bomber which crashed during Barrow shipyard mission

Friday marked the anniversary of the Heinkel 111 leaving Nantes in western France after a reconnaissance mission the night before revealed that a Royal Navy aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious, was docked in Barrow.

“Fully loaded with fuel for the 1200-mile round trip and armour piercing bombs the Luftwaffe mission was to destroy the aircraft carrier,” said the Home Front Museum.

HMS Illustrious (Image: Royal Navy)

“However, when the bombers arrived, they couldn’t see the warship and were met with a hail of bullets from anti-aircraft guns. “The pilot banked away from Barrow and headed south over Liverpool Bay crashing a short time later on Llwytmor.

“Three of the crew were thrown clear in the impact while the fourth crew member, engineer Josef Bruninghausen, was killed. The survivors stayed on the mountainside until dawn when they decided that one of them should descend the mountain and find help.”

In her cottage, half a mile above the village of Abergwyngregyn, Mrs Baxter heard a knock at the door.

The Heinkel aircraft. Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-343-0694-21 / Schödl (e) / CC-BY-SA 3.0 (Image: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-343-0694-21 / Schödl (e) / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The Home Front Museum said: “On answering it, she was confronted by Wireless Operator Kurt Schlender who held his hands above his head and tried to communicate to her in broken English that his plane had crashed.

"While Mr Baxter guarded the German airman, his wife drove to the village and summoned help with the police and Home Guard returning to the house with Marion Baxter. By this time the other two German airmen had found their way down to the isolated cottage.

“They were instructed to take the authorities back to the crash site where the body of the plane’s engineer was placed on a stretcher and carried off the hill. After hospital treatment, all three were housed at a prisoner of war camp near Oldham and eventually transported to a prisoner of war camp in Canada.

“At the internment camp, Bruno Peronowski, the observer on the German bomber, became depressed after learning of the deaths of his wife and daughter when their home town in East Prussia was occupied by the Russian army.

“In 1946 Peronowski was found guilty of murdering a fellow German prisoner who he believed was a communist and of having Russian sympathies. He was hanged along with two other internees for the crime. The body of Josef Bruninghausen is interred at Cannock Chase German Military Cemetery, Staffordshire.

“Today very little remains at the crash site save for some pieces of undercarriage and fused aluminium.”