Very impressive, thank you very much Leendert and Peter Cornwell! It seems historical research into WWII aviation has reached such depth that anything can be traced, even when faulty information has been supplied by the thread starter.
Ah, so the plane in question is a Hurricane Mk. I and not a Spitfire. And yes, upon further inspection, the code is indeed
GZ rather than CZ.
So No. 32 RAF Squadron lost two planes on 08.06.1940. According to
this site, the Squadron used Abbeville as its base. Abbeville was lost 4 days earlier. However as indicated by Leendert, the two planes must have been in combat since the pilots were killed. So we can exclude that GZ-Z was simply captured or so when their base fell. Is the more or less exact location known, where both planes were lost? Abbeville means utmost northren section of the front, which matches exactly where the photographer of the photo in 1940 found himself. In fact he drove through Abbeville himself during the Vormarsch. So it is likely he found these planes very shortly after they were shot down.
Eerie to me is, that I now know a pilot died in this plane. I attached a scan of the foto showing GZ-Z after the landing. Please excuse the bad quality of the scan. I always assumed the pilot got out safely because there is no body to be seen in the cockpit. Also the plane does not show any "combat signs" like bullet holes that (at least, myself as newbie) one would expect. At the contrary, it almost looks like an 'only' emergency landing as only the propeller took damage (the wings of the propeller beind curved, as to clearly suggest a forced landing) and the forward parts of both wings are scraped. Also as you can see the ground has been scraped away, GZ-Z crashed in a grassy field.
So now my question is, who flew GZ-Z? Was it pilot Kirckcaldie or Cherrington?
This site lists both as only casualties of their squadron, however also doesn't know the exact code of both planes. They seem buried in two different graveyards, suggesting they were killed at least some distance from each other.
Also, how were both planes taken down? Like I assumed, it maybe was not air fighting. So German Flugzeugabwehr, perhaps?
Thanks again for all the help.
