[tcolvin]

That could have been the night my mother always talked about. I've always wondered when it was.

We lived at 4 The Grove, Lincoln and my mother was in the habit of an evening, to walk along Nettleham Road, past the Cathedral, down Pottergate and Lindum Hill to a house in Monks Road where she played bridge.

Returning one night on her own, and told by a policemen to be careful as there were reports of German aircraft machine-gunning and bombing down-town Lincoln, she saw, as she approached and walked past the East front of the Cathedral, a German twin-engined aircraft circling around it for some time. She said she cowered in one of the archways of the wall alongside Nettleham Road opposite the Lincoln Hotel; the archways are still there, and so is the (rebuilt) hotel.

I have always assumed that she saw a Ju-88 circling the Cathedral while watching for the landing lights to be flicked on at Scampton, Waddington and Hemswell, all of which (and possibly additional airfields) would have been in plain view of the LW crew intending to attack returning bombers as they steadied on finals.

Tony