[Steve Brew]

Hi Rich

On pages 52-53 of "Guests of the State" (Brandon, 1994), Irish historian T. Ryle Dwyer writes, "The next belligerent plane to arrive made deliberately for Ireland on 3 March 1941. Viennese Leutnant Alfred Heinzl's Heinkel 111 bomber had been hit during an attack on an Allied convoy in the Atlantic. On engine had been knocked out , the other damaged and the 23-year-old rear gunner, Gefreiter Gerd Rister, shot dead. They had been able to put out a fire in the rear of the aircraft but had no hope of returning to their base in France. When the navigator, Feldwebel Athur Voigt, explained they would have to choose between landing in Britain or Ireland, the choice was straightforward.

"All we knew was that Ireland was supposed to be neutral so we opted for there," Voigt recalled. "I picked out a spot in Co. Wexford and we limped in our battered aircraft towards it." It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the plane landed with its wheels up at Rostoonstown.

The four surviving crew members immediately alighted, dismantled a machine-gun from the turret and removed Rister's body. They walked about a hundred yards into the sand dunes and began firing on the plane. As some local people approached, the crew warned them to take cover because the plane was about to blow up. Suddenly there was a loud explosion and bits of the plane went hurtling into the air. Heinzl, Voigt and their two comrades, Gefreiter Maximillian Galler and Feldwebel Rudolf Hengst, were taken into custody and interned in the Curragh with the minimum of delay."

I hope this is a help

Guests of the State is out of print but you can (I could) obtain a copy on Abebooks, and Dwyer is currently a political correspondent with the "The Examiner" in Cork city.

Regards
Steve