Help Please! 109 Messerschmitt Crash Site.

I am trying to find the source of a report I have heard about. Not many years ago an RAF Helicopter was called out over the Goodwin Sands in Kent to a crash sight. They subsequently identified this as a historic crash of a Messerschmitt 109, with the pilot still in-situ, probably dating from the Battle of Britain.

The report, was I understand written up in a magazine.

Any help would be really gratefully received. We are campaigning to stop Dover Harbour Board dredging the Goodwins for aggregate.... The fact that it is a War Grave for both Allied & Axis servicemen seems to have passed them by.......

[Chris Going]

Hello BB. Your request is a bit problematic. It has several hallmarks characteristic of urban myths, viz: lack of precision about the date (‘not many years ago’), the place (‘the Goodwin Sands’). The lack of precision about the agency (‘an RAF Helicopter’), and the authority drawing the threads together is suitably vague (‘They’) is highly characteristic. And finally the official conclusions (‘a report’) are reproduced in a secondary source (‘a magazine’) which is undated and conveniently anonymous.

If you are keen to stop the dredging of the Goodwins for aggregate, then it would be far better for the Group to talk to EH’s successor body as they are very much preoccupied with the preservation of known wreck sites round English shores (as indeed are similar Scottish and Welsh bodies). The Goodwin sands is known as the Ship Swallower for good reason, and there will be a long list of historic wrecks attested as lost on the Goodwins. But if you want to find an A/c; then Observer Corps, HAA, LAA, Searchlight, Coastguard and other records will allow you to compile a list of aircraft which came down in the Goodwins area. The sands do shift. Things get exposed, and again, hidden. I am prepared to believe an Me 109 lies somewhere on (or in) the Goodwin sands.

But first, go back to whoever told you this vague story and cross-examine them until you have better time lines, a date or two, and possibly, even, a magazine title.

Good luck

ChrisG