Rad report 24Aug43 - grid square query

[Matheson]

Steve Brew kindly sent me this combat report some years ago when I was researching the death of my late father-in-law. It gives a position of the attack as "by DR in G 81 square". Can anyone tell me where this was. The attack was based on an intercept from GCI Sandwich.

[Nick Beale]

DR is dead reckoning, i.e. the Nav/Rad worked out the position for himself. The alternative was for night fighters to get a fix from the Ground Control Intercept station.

G is probably a reference to Square wG in the British Cassini Grid. The 100 km square was sub-divided so that "81" was a point 80 km across from bottom left and 10 km up.

[Matheson]

Thank you for your thoughts about this. West Malling is in Kent and according to the report they set out on a bearing of 100 degrees i.e. slightly south so unlikely to have ended up in East Anglia I should have thought given the description but maybe I have missed something??? I am not sure how this ties in with the German losses for the night.

My quest was to see what if anything was the most likely explanation for there being 4 British claims for a successful downing of an enemy aircraft compared to 3 losses confirmed by the Germans.

On another point, did ME 410's characteristically burst into flames and burn in this way or would this have been more characteristic of a Mosquito being shot down?