1401 Met Flight Spitfire Sint-Truiden Sept 1942

[Roundway]

On 1 September 1942 a Spitfire IV, AB131, piloted by F/O C E Heggveit (RCAF) of 1401 Meteorological Flight, landed at the Luftwaffe night-fighter airfield of Sint-Truiden in Belgium.

When I first posted a thread about this aircraft 15 years ago (December 2007), it prompted a single response by Revi16 (Mike) who included a link which unfortunately doesn't work for me now (http://www.luftwaffe-experten.org/fo...?showtopic=310).

I've been prompted to look at the circumstances of this incident again and wonder if the war diaries for Sint Truiden or any of the units based at the airfield include any indication of the time the aircraft landed - I'm thinking of a broad time-frame of between 1100 and 1500 hours.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Brian

[Brian Bines]

There is a discussion on the RAF Commands Site which talks about a reciprocal course being flown as his flight was planned to Ireland , it adds he was repariated in 1944 . I just put 'F/O C E Heggveit (RCAF)' into search and it came up .

[Roundway]

Many thanks Brian and, yes I've seen and contributed to various discussions dating back to 2007. It's just struck me that the one missing piece of the jigsaw is that it's not known how long he was airborne for before landing at Sint-Truiden (he left Bircham Newton at 1025 hours UK time that day), hence my wondering if, after 15 years, a KTB of one of the units at Sint-Truiden has come to light and records the incident.

Brian

[Larry deZeng]

Brian R. -

The two units of concern are:
Flughafenbereichskommando 10/VI in Gent (Ghent) subordinated Fliegerhorstkommandantur E 31/XII Sint-Truiden (St. Trond) from July 1940 to August 1943.

The KTB und Anlagen for the above would make detailed mention of your errant Spitfire but, unfortunately, no records for either survived the war. This is based on a complete table of contents I made in August 1990 for the Flugh.Ber.Kdos. (BA-MA RL 20) and the Fl.H.Kdtr'en (BA-MA RL 21). Since that was 32 years ago, you might want to check RL 20 and RL 21 again. Records long misplaced or thought to be lost suddenly appear with some frequency.

L. deZ.