“All Good Things Must Come To an End”
It’s been an amazing trip. I don’t want to rub it in but I can’t help but smile when I update the forum telling all of my recent travels, and of my day-to-day discoveries. One particular upload led me to notice a new contact name within my private messages. I receive many messages daily via the forum, mostly wishing me luck with my quest and to wish me safe travelling. This one was however quite different, the name standing out and clearly Italian. I had mentioned that upon leaving Bulgaria our intention was to cross over to Italy and visit the old airbases from which my dad may have flown. Also to most definitely pay my respects in the small village cemetery of Carpi, Modena Province, at the grave site of Gunner Joshua Petterson. He was the young gunner whose body was parachuted out of the Thompson by my father that day.
I read this new private message with much curiosity and quite a degree of uncertainty. By all accounts it was an invitation to meet a man who had further information about my father. This gentleman was named Carlo Ghirlandaio, and by all accounts was the same age as me; mid-fifties. He was very keen indeed to meet with me. His first email read;
Hello to all you all Brian
I follow the story with big interest and I sorry strong for not to in touch earlier. This was not reluctant to me no but unsure to tell you the story. You are come to Italy yes? I want much to see you. We talk about Brian. My mother being was friend good to him.
Carlo Ghirlandaio
Carlo and I began a series of correspondence over the next couple of days, but try as hard as I might I could never get a straight answer to a simple question. The question was easy: “What do you know about my dad?” I thought maybe it was a translation issue, although his English was understandable it did lack a degree of correct grammar. But no, Carlo would say to me “I speak in when Italia, no for forum words.”
Well what choice did I really have? I was heading for Italy already and a fact that was widely known back home. Carlo had obviously known this too and perhaps now with my being in Bulgaria, well he realised the timing of the invite would be appropriate. It made sense too. I’d just been in Italy but had kept this change in travel direction off the thread so he wouldn’t have known that until quite recently. He was clearly keeping himself well up to date with my activities and my whereabouts too, obviously with some degree of sincere interest.
What exactly did he know? And why wouldn’t he tell me? Doreen and I concluded that it must be something important, as he was not prepared to part with this information in writing, publicly or privately. I toyed with the idea or ringing him as he had given me his telephone number, but if his writing was anything to go by, a fluent conversation seemed quite unviable. Though I have to say, Doreen did rather fancy a few more days back in Italy again.
After a few more days in Bulgaria and Macedonia we headed west to the coast of Albania. From there, from Durres, we caught a direct ferry over to Trieste, Italy. I have to say that this six hour crossing wasn’t one that I welcomed given the upset caused by my last boat trip. That one, Dover direct to Calais, was only half of this at just under 3 hours long. I have to say it proved to be a very pleasant crossing indeed. We really enjoyed it and had no complaints whatsoever. The E55 soon taking us up to Foggia, where my father had flown from on his last final mission.
The military airfields at Foggia were a series of World War II airfields located within a 25 mile radius of the town. Foggia is in the Italian Provence of the same name. It was a collection of airfields that became known during the war as the Foggia Complex and from any number of this group of air-strips the Thompson could have taken-off from. The fifteenth United States Air Force, the Twelfth (1944 – 1945) and the British Royal Air Force (1943 – 1945) all used strips at Foggia throughout the Italian Campaign.
The Italian Royal Air Force Regia Aeronautica had constructed a series of airfields in the Foggia area before the outbreak of war. They consisted of hard-surfaced runways and taxi-ways, concrete parking areas and permanent buildings used as military barracks. Following the Armistice signed between Italy and the Allied armed forces during September of 1943, the airfields were violently seized by German forces and became a central airbase for the German Luftwaffe.
The German Luftwaffe occupation of the Foggia airbases drew extensive and continued heavy bombing by both the RAF and USAAF. The airbases were eventually seized by the British Eighth Army in October 1943. After the area was captured, extensive repairs were conducted by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (COE), enabling the complex to be adapted for use by heavy bomber operations. Italian weather conditions were notably more favourable than of those in Britain. These favoured conditions would allow the Fifteenth and Eighth US Air Force to conduct daylight strategic bombing of both occupied Europe and Nazi Germany. The Foggia Airfield Complex would now enable heavy Allied bombers to strike countless previously unreached targets in France, Germany, Austria and particularly the Balkans (Bulgaria) which, due to flight range, was totally inaccessible from England. In addition to air support, Foggia was also a major Allied command centre for land ground forces in Allied occupied southern Italy and the naval forces of the Adriatic Sea.
Beyond those captured concrete strips that remain even today were constructed numerous temporary and semi-permanent airfields throughout the war years, now all lost and returned to local agriculture. I could picture the scene in my mind, even if little physical evidence of their pre-existence remained before me here today. Dad’s letters, the personal wartime accounts of ‘Bull’s-Eye’, had always left a firm imprint in my mind. He wrote home of the “green grass that grew up through the pierced steel planking of the temporary runways” and of the “parking and dispersal areas” where they would stand to see which of their friends would return from sorties alive, and to note those who would not. He frequently apologised for his short letters saying that it was due to the poor lighting available, the mess hall constructed out of wood, and his sleeping quarters often nothing more than a canvas tent. “There is only one dimly lit light bulb at the centre of our tent,” he wrote to Mother. “Our tent floor is grass. When the rain falls we often sleep on nothing more than dirt.” In another letter he said, “We have scavenged plywood for flooring. We have converted old wooden cots into beds and an old damaged 55-gallon oil drum we have converted into a wood burning stove.” I tried to imagine the site of that old steel control tower he would often reference, in saying “never did the cold touch of steel feel so warm than when it came into a pilot’s sight.” These old control towers now gone and long since removed for scrap.
Six-man tents were used for billeting and all lined up in rows with both orderly and mess hall at one end. I imagined the fear that these men must have lived through, sleeping under canvas whilst enemy fighters would swoop down, strafing them with machine gun fire overnight. With little or no protection from enemy attack, many must have died whilst they slept. Dad would, as I have said, never write home about the losses of the war.
Wrecked enemy aircraft, Italian and German, were apparently a common sight. Stanley had told me this and had proudly shown me a photo in the album of my father standing beside a downed Stuka. The twisted metal frames and fuselages and wings, the glass and all other useful parts finding themselves reused in a multitude of ways by the boys. Dad had joked in one of his letters about how they had used the old cockpit glass to make themselves a bread oven. The heat of the day’s hot Italian sun would naturally warm the dough to rise inside it.
About two dozen airfields were in operation in Foggia during 1944, all supporting strategic bombing missions and bomber crew escort duties, tactical fighter operations and of course general reconnaissance and air defence. All of them gone with the end of the war in May of 1945, abandoned by the Allies and the land returned to the original owners, or to the Italian government. Only a few strips still exist today as commercial airports and only one of them is still used by the Italian Air Force, the new Aeronautica Militare.
So, now w
e draw to the conclusion of my story and the end to my trip. “As all good things, sadly, must come to an end,” Doreen said, as she placed her arm around my shoulders as I drove. I had felt that I had become so close to my father during these many days of travel and felt saddened to return home. What Carlo would go on to tell me however would shatter that feeling. My whole world would for a time, fall apart. Although at last I finally gained the truth about what had happened that evening, that fateful night, at 22.30 hours when the Thompson had flown for the last time from Foggia.
Carlo lived very close to Foggia, in a small coastal town called Manfredonia, just a short drive up toward the north-east. His house easily found, I received a very warm welcome on my arrival that day: at the time, a welcome that seemed somewhat out of place, somewhat over-the-top if I can say. I would come to understand this strange and quite unexpected over-emotional reaction later. It was a beautiful house and I had nervously knocked upon the door, a door upon an external wooden mezzanine above his garage and with a clear view of the deep blue Italian sea. I remember thinking, momentarily thinking to myself, how lucky he must be to live in such a beautiful place; the air so fresh and clean. Then the door opened suddenly within seconds of my knock, as if he had been waiting for me, he stood at the other side of it.
I went in. I was greeted by his wife, Pietra and their two daughters who had come to their parents’ house that day just to meet with me, their names Pia and Luisa. Everything about this greeting, his physical reaction to me and the family get-together was just so bizarre. They gave me a wonderful meal, all vegetarian. They were not vegetarian but Carlo had found out this information about me from the forum thread. I started to believe that he probably knew more about my own life than I did. After sharing a rather expensive bottle of Italian red wine, and you could tell by the taste that no expense had been spared, we approached the subject. Carlo’s spoken English was almost perfect, so much better than his written word and not at all what I had expected. I presumed he must have used an online translator whilst writing to me. Pietra, Pia and Luisa were not so confident; just very basic greetings and expressions. Pleasant formalities of a sincere and polite nature, I would say.
“Let's walk Brian?” Carlo suggested. “We will talk about Brian now.” Off out down a small narrow stone-paved street and along a quiet pedestrianised coastal wall we went. Nothing too grand this sea wall, probably only twelve feet or so above the sea level below, but very pleasant indeed. We sat, seated on a wooden bench overlooking the sea and admiring the moored boats and craft in front of us. “That one’s mine,” he said, pointing to a modest wooden clinker. “I use it when I need to think. I’m going to re-name her the Thompson.” Excitedly, as if a child in a sweet shop, he continued. “Look at what I have brought you here to see Brian.” Carlo pointed to the back of the wooden bench behind me. This bench, a normal everyday traditional (oak) wooden bench on which we sat was obviously new. It could not have been more than just a few weeks old. There upon its back support, a brass plaque that Carlo was eagerly pointing toward. It read to my complete astonishment, “In Loving Memory of Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson – RAF. Foggia 1945. Look upon the sea and remember me.”
I didn’t know what to say or where to turn. This was indeed a very kind gesture but why had he done it? What reason or business of his was it anyway? These private thoughts at the time. My reaction was one of shock, of gratitude but also of anger. Why had he not told me this previously? Why bring me all the way here just to show me a new bench and why had he not just chosen to email me a photograph of it? But most of all, why the hell was my father’s name on it?
There was a period of silence between us that was only broken by a single tear, a single tear that fell from Carlo’s eye. “Brian, please forgive me,” he said, “but is the only way I think how.” He reached into his inner upper coat pocket and pulled out an envelope, an old envelope and inside it a collection of tattered black and white photographs. They must have been in some form of pre-arranged order, as he removed the top one carefully without looking inside to select it. “This is a photograph of me as the baby in 1945. I was just a few weeks old at the time and this is my mother,” he said. I looked appreciably at the photograph. Whilst his mother was indeed very beautiful I still failed to see what exactly his point in all this was and what this had to do with me. Then he took out another photograph. “This is my mother and father together before I born late on in 1945,” he said, but this time his voice was delivered in a very quiet and almost worried manner. He paused and passed it to me. His father was an identical twin of Dad. I had discovered that my “father had had an unknown twin brother” I thought... But this wasn’t a twin, and the penny finally dropped; this was my father.
I had thought to myself the first time I saw Carlo, just a few hours beforehand that he was the spitting image of my father too. There was also an apparent family likeness between us but like I have just said, the penny just hadn’t dropped. Why should it? This was the last thing I expected to find out today or even on any day. I remembered what old Stanley Jack had said to me the first time we saw each other, “spittin’ bloody image of the man himself,” I recalled him saying this to me. Carlo grasped me firmly by both shoulders and almost shaking me to pieces, said, “I am your half-brother, Brian.”
There it was, that was that, the ‘In Loving Memory’ phrase upon the plaque now explained the reasoning to me in full. I mean, at the time I didn’t understand why it hadn’t simply read ‘In Memory Of’. The addition of the word ‘Loving’ always implying a close personal or family connection. But I fully understood now.
He continued to show me many photographs, all of them old, all of them black and white and all of them of my father. Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson, the whiter than white Brian, a man I had believed to be as pure as the driven snow had been shagging an Italian woman behind my mother’s back, and this woman was Carlo’s mother.
I stayed with Carlo and his wife for several days, initially in disbelief and often at times arguing with him as to the degree of accuracy of his facts and information. With every objection point I raised, he would soon knock me back down to earth. It was either an answer that I couldn’t argue with or some form of physical evidence to suggest that I was the one who was wrong. As unbelievable as it was to me, I had to concede the fact that Carlo Ghirlandaio was my half-brother. The love letters he showed me were just as intense and as personal as those written to my mother, but these ones addressed to his mother, and all indisputably in my (our) father’s own hand.
The drive homeward and north was a sombre journey. I had liked Carlo and his family very much and in many ways delighted at my time of life, to discover a long lost half-brother. I use the word sombre because I felt so very sorry, mournful for my mother. She had died crying over Dad’s love letters and here I was confronted with his dishonestly and betrayal of that profound love. In my personal judgement, the contents of Carlo’s letters confirmed Dad had loved his mother quite equally. Life can be so very complex, so very complicated. I tried not to judge ‘Bull’s-Eye’ too harshly. After all, Stanley had said, none of them ever expected to return back home after the war. They all flew in the full knowledge that they would die at any moment, and half of the bomber crews never did return. They died in service. What was now made clear is that my father knew nothing of Carlo’s birth and he, upon completion of this final mission was coming home to be with my mother. Surely this was just a wartime fling?
I had always planned to end my trip at Dover. I had been there many times over the years to see the location of Dad’s demise. The Thompson was now situated on a plinth to the port-side, not often noticed by the boarding traveller as it was sited to the far eastern perimeter and hidden from view by cargo freight and shipping containers. I think what kept me sane on my long journey home was the sense of humour of all the lads, the boys, who by now were overloading the forum threads with their smutty sense of humour, making a joke of the whole situation. These jokes, al
l so very funny and often just one line sentences of support reading no more than, “chin up lad!” The funniest comment I read was, “What is the difference between Brian and Carlo? None.” Somebody else had voted to rename the Foggia Airbase complex simply the “Hornio Foggia!” An airport to be named after my father! Well that’s an honour usually reserved for the likes of JFK or Charles de Gaulle, I chuckled inwardly to myself.
Carlo gave me a letter; a letter written by his mother, a letter that she had written to him to be read only in the event of her death. She had left it in the strict care of a friend. Carlo was firm and forceful in the words he said to me. “Do not read letter until you are safely home Brian. You are to read it when you reach Liverpool and not before. This you will is promise me?” He explained that it was this letter that had led him to find me and make contact.
He had tried to verify the contents enclosed, as written by his mother for two years but had failed. Then he had received a random and anonymous postcard simply signed off with a letter X. Maybe this was a kiss or perhaps just a signature to reinforce and demonstrate the writer’s anonymity. He had shown me the card previously that day but it made no sense to me. It arrived post office stamped just three weeks before we had both met up for the first time, and posted from northern France. It simply read, “Search for Brian Wilkinson, the Thompson, online blog. You’ll find your answer there - X.” On doing so he had then come across my war forum thread following an internet search using these suggested words. He said that it was also quite apparent that his mother had not known anything of my existence. “If she had, I feel sure she would have said so within this, her final words,” he exclaimed.
Carlo’s mother had died in 2003 at the age of 78 years, three years before I started to tell the world my story. He slipped the postcard in alongside his mother’s final letter and I promised him; one, not to read it before my return and two, to return them both to him in person at a later date. I think this gave him some sort of personal assurance that we would stay in touch with each other and that we would meet again soon.
I broke this promise. I had no choice. I thought long and hard about it, Doreen telling me not too. “There’s a reason he said what he said Brian. Please don’t read it yet.” Her words echoed around and around inside my troubled mind. But I had to read it. Contained within was the answer surely? Why all this cloak and dagger behaviour? There was no other explanation. This letter was left for Carlo to read after his mother’s death and he had given it to me for a good reason. Nobody would ever part with such a treasured personal possession without good cause, would they?
I cannot begin to explain the emotion I felt. I read it again and again and again and wanted to return to Manfredonia to confront Carlo. I wanted him to tell me to my face that this was not true, that it was all lies and the basis of some sick joke. I also realised why he had given it to me to read later at home. He knew how shocking it would be to me. He knew that our one meeting so far could easily have proved to be our last. But I also knew that this was not something that I could have told my half-brother to his face, so how could I expect him to have done so? The hurt, the disbelief, the absolute anger that I felt, but above all a sense of deep respect for him. Carlo could have taken this letter to the grave with him, kept it private as a lifelong secret but he had chosen not to. He was honest with me, the kind of painful honestly that one would only find from one’s brother, a real brother. For this very reason and despite everything else, I understood him and his final motives fully. He must have agonised over it.
The letter is far too personal to post on the thread or to later add to this, my war time story and my search for my war hero father, Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson. Three pages of honest and brutal confession, and for the respect of Carlo who will read this, I choose not to publish it. I will however tell you what it said.
Just like me, Carlo had never met or known our father. His mother, Alessandra Ghirlandaio was a Nazi sympathiser during the war years; her husband Marco, an Italian pilot shot down by the RAF in 1943, and killed in action; an event that she had apparently never recovered from. She had never re-married, had not borne a previous child to Marco and had maintained her husband’s family name, Ghirlandaio, until her death in 2003.
Alessandra, originally from Genoa had moved to the Foggia region for one single purpose. She was to spy on the now allied occupied airbases and this she did with great efficiency, covertly reporting back to fascist contacts who remained unidentified within the letter.
Alessandra Ghirlandaio had successfully infiltrated the base and worked as a volunteer kitchen hand, her paperwork and identity all falsified, her passport at the time stating the name Alessandra Orsini. Alessandra became a close confident of our father and inevitably they became lovers. However, despite my father’s clear devotion to her, her hatred and despise of the RAF crews based at Foggia remained. It was Alessandra who would betray my father that night, alongside two additional passengers, the scientists. Alessandra Orsini as she was known at the time had, under the direct instructions of Berlin, placed a bomb aboard the Thompson that evening.
We had successfully prevented this devastating German nuclear technology from falling into the hands of the Soviets and Berlin had successfully prevented it from falling into the hands of the Allies. Now I had my answer, all thanks to the written confession of the woman who had murdered my father.
Why had this woman chosen to do this? This question was unanswered as I would later read. This letter wasn’t written to me but it was written to her son, her only child, Carlo. She remarked how she had kissed my father goodbye that night. How my father had cried in her arms and how this at the time meant nothing to her. Not only was she crippled with revenge for Marco’s death, she was also paralysed by her belief that Nazi ideology would survive; that Germany was certain to win the war. For her Brian was already dead, as she knew he was now returning to his wife Evelina back in Liverpool. Their relationship was over. Alessandra Orsini had also wanted an abortion when she later found out she was pregnant. I felt for Carlo when I read this. His mother had killed his father, and she had also wanted to kill him.
But the guilt of her actions had taken their toll on her and she was unable to terminate her pregnancy. She said that she couldn’t kill again. By the end of the war she had seen Germany for what it was and long turned her back on fascist ideologies. She remarked that during the war, she and so many other Italians were overcome with hate and that after the war, “We couldn’t even remember what we had been fighting for.” She made a reference to the Italian Allied armistice of 1943, and how thereafter the truth of Nazi revenge and retaliation against the Italians had not been fully known to her. She said she was young and naïve, foolish, with misplaced loyalty, and she considered even her own homeland of Italy to be a traitor at the time.
Alessandra could not live with her actions following the end of the war and other than the letter she had left Carlo, she had only ever confessed her secret to her Priest who had enabled her to come to terms with her actions and who had forgiven her. Her own self-imposed punishment was to never to love again or to remarry. She would love and care for Carlo as Brian would have wanted. This she did until her end. Her final written words to him; “Son please forgive me.”
And here we now find ourselves back in the UK. I, PC Brian Wilkinson finally had and knew the whole truth. What I had now, and needed to do, was to somehow find a way to accept it as the truth. After a short period of readjustment, in May of 2005, I arranged to travel down to the Royal Air Force Museum at Cosford, Shropshire. There I would meet up with a gentleman called John Stevenson. John was a highly trained and skilled aviation mechanic who had written a series of books, one of them entitled ‘The B17 Strategic Heavy Bomber from Inside Out’. John Stevenson had obtained a PhD for his work, but always declined to be referred to as Dr Stevenson. He had been recommended to me as a useful contact by Albert, my original forum contact.
From Cosford, he would join me and travel d
own to Dover. This was all free of charge as his curiosity was proving to be greater than mine. We already knew a bomb had been placed on the plane in Italy. If the purpose of this sabotage was purely to kill the German scientists on-board and prevent the Allies or Soviets from gaining this technology, then it must have been timed to explode after they were on board, and after the destruction of the facility. This single and overriding guiding principal we both agreed upon. The precise location, timing and purpose of the mission was fully known, as confirmed by Alessandra’s letter. Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson, in his blindness of passion had confided all to her. The mystery was why had the plane not been blown out of the sky?
We kept referring back to my father’s final letter, his last words, “Fuel out, dropping fast, too low to bail, please take care of Bethany for me.” He had had time to write these final words and he makes no reference to any blast on-board. It was no catastrophic explosion that had brought the Thompson down that night but a lack of fuel. Why didn’t they bail out? Why had they left it so late and not tried to save themselves?
There are so many scenarios to consider. The drop tanks used to increase the bomber’s flight range would already have been discarded and dropped long before reaching Dover. This we also agreed on, and that meant the B17 was flying using its normal wing-housed fuel tanks. Had the bomb failed to go off and had they quite simply run out of fuel? Had his phrase “too low to bail” meant they had left it too late after falling from a much higher altitude, or were they intentionally flying at low altitude to prevent detection?
We would never know the answer to this particular question, and this John and I accepted. This answer would only be found out at a time when secret military files concerning the mission would be released. This for certain was not going to occur within my life time. All of my correspondence and requests for information from the Royal Air Force directly had been declined. The RAF had refused to comment on any matter whatsoever concerning the final flight of the Thompson.
The Thompson had left the Foggia complex on February 26th 1945 at 22.30 hours. This date just a little over three months before the Allied D-Day landings of Northern France. This date a most significant date. From Bulgaria she would have flown directly back to conserve fuel, her flight path taking her across Romania, Hungary and Austria before crossing Germany and Belgium or at least the northern tip of France, all of which were at the time heavily occupied by German forces. Realistically, as John would put it to me, “There wasn’t anywhere to bail out Brian. This cargo was far too precious to fall back into enemy hands. I suspect that in the event of a failed mission, these two scientists would have been executed by the crew long before that would be allowed to happen.” A chilling thought but one that made perfect sense to me.
So, what of the two German scientists then? If the bomb had failed to go off, had they sabotaged the flight in a desperate escape plan? We agreed that for sure the scientists would not have known about the bomb on-board. If they had, they would have warned the crew. “And let’s face it Brian,” said John. “If they had fallen back into enemy hands they faced execution. Berlin knew of this mission, they were traitors. There was no way that they would double-cross the crew and sabotage a plane and thus ultimately lead to their own certain deaths.” And he added a point that had not crossed my mind previously. “Although they were fleeing to the UK to escape the Russians, they were still our enemy. They would have been restrained in the plane somehow and at the very least handcuffed to some form of fixed panelling.” This all made perfect sense to me too. The crew wouldn’t have trusted them and therefore there would have been no opportunity for them to sabotage the flight.
So if the bomb did not bring down the Thompson and the scientist couldn’t have had the opportunity (or the political will) to sabotage it, what did bring it down? “Well,” said John, “that’s what we are going to find out.”
We arrived at Dover and headed straight for the port and parking up alongside the old Thompson, her standing there overbearingly looming down upon us from its mighty stone plinth. We got out and noted the relatively good condition she remained in after all these years. “Off you go,” John said to me. “What?” I replied. He explained. He needed the space to concentrate without disturbance. He had a lot of work to do and he wanted to do it right. I had to agree, despite the fact that I wanted him to talk me through the entire process. I arranged to meet him back at the guest house we had pre-booked at 8 pm that Saturday evening.
Time passed slowly at first and there are a limited number of shops that one can occupy one’s time with in Dover. I do give the town credit for one thing though, the best fish and chips I have eaten this side of Liverpool. I later whiled away my time with a visit to the castle and the underground war bunkers. The castle is spectacularly situated above the White Cliffs of Dover and has guarded our shores from invasion for over twenty centuries, and now was in the protective hands and security of English Heritage. The darkly atmospheric ‘Secret Wartime Tunnels’ as described, and its splendid most “vivid recreation of the Dunkirk evacuation, all this complete with dramatic projections of swooping Spitfires and real film footage,” proved to be as promised in the brochure, absolutely fantastic. Before I knew it, time was upon me and I rushed to get back for 8 pm.
John was already there waiting at the bar with a fine pint of beer in his hand and a rather large smug grin upon his face. “A beer for my friend,” he said to the barman. “I have some good news for him.” We took a seat at a table by the window, and from a brown cardboard tube he produced a sketched technical drawing plan, detailing the mechanics of a B17. “Now then, first hear this Brian,” he said. “I agree with you, you are being followed.” And then he laughed. “I didn’t believe it at first but it’s true, a blue Ford Mondeo with tinted windows, sorry couldn’t get the plate but it’s been watching me all day. It was there at the port and a moment ago it was here in the street outside. Personally I don’t believe in coincidence like that Brian.” He already knew of my previous sightings of it having read so on my thread.
“Now on to the plane. Look at the plan Brian. What I expected to find I didn’t,” he said. “Under the circumstances as we know, if I was going to bomb that plane and ensure everybody was killed immediately, killed without any hope of survival at all, I would do it here.” He pointed to the left wing, to a fuel line junction pump and at a schematical point where the wing joined onto the main fuselage section of the bomber. “This is the central fuel pump housing Brian. It would rip the outer wing away, cause a violent and uncontrollable downward spiral force, one that nobody could survive. The gravitational pull would be so violent it would prevent any hope of escape and the fire within would be intense. She would be engulfed in seconds.”
He continued, “The plane has been restored to an exceptionally high standard. I’ve seen better planes than this get scrapped. They spent a lot of money doing this Brian. They may be following you and they may be keeping secrets from you but one thing is for sure, the Thompson means a lot to them.” “Yes, I suppose so when you put it like that,” I replied. He continued. “It was found in three sections; the left wing detached and the cockpit, main fuselage and right wing intact. The rear fuselage tail section was snapped away. Are you still following me Brian?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “fully. Please go on.” “Well, here it is then. There has been extensive damage to the left outer-prop and wing tip, all now fully restored and no expense has been spared. Damage sustained when it crashed. This plane did not fly directly into anything but had caught the water, left wing down. It twirled over, causing the wing to snap away and landed heavily tail first, this rear fuselage section then breaking away.” (He demonstrated this half somersault motion to me using a beer mat). “So the bomb didn’t bring it down then?” I blurted out. “No it didn’t Brian. No doubt there was a bomb on board, we know that but it most certainly didn’t detonate. I cannot find any evidence whatsoever of an explosion taking place anywhere within this old bugger,
absolutely none. And furthermore, fully restored or not, there is absolutely no evidence of any attack from outside bringing her down either.”
“So what does all this mean then John? I must confess, I’m a little confused.” “It means exactly this Brian,” he patiently went on to add to the conversation. “Realising that they could not clear the cliff top at Dover they navigated portside, left, and attempted to land at sea and as close to the cliffs as they could. They would have tried to land her with the cockpit raised and belly first. They wouldn’t have lowered the landing gear as they needed a smooth water landing. But this didn’t happen. The left wing caught the water first and not the belly. It dug in immediately and turned her violently around anti-clockwise. I have absolutely no doubt Brian, this was nothing more than a tragic wartime accident, and she quite simply ran out of fuel,” he added. “There is no evidence of burning, none, no explosion and no fire. There was no fuel on board when she hit.”
“And what of the bodies?” I asked. “Where are the other two bodies then?” “Well, we know that the pilot and navigator were found strapped in the cockpit side-by-side and we know that your dad was also found strapped into his rear gun placement. The B17 crew were equipped with heated suits given the high altitude at which she could fly, but your father was found still in his flight jacket, yes?” He asked. “Yes,” I said. “The man in the black bowler hat had said this, the letter was pushed down inside his flight jacket, and no mention of a heated suit was ever made.”
“Well here it is then. If we go with that info, we confirm that she had returned at low altitude. I think they almost made it, but they were already by now flying low and by the time they had dropped without sufficient fuel over the channel, the only place they could possibly conceive to bail out without certain capture, well by then it was too late. The scientist seated in the main fuselage would have, upon the fuselage snapping in two, been thrown out and washed away, handcuffed or otherwise (I shuddered at the thought of arms being torn from shoulders) given such violent impact as the plane tossed herself over.” John used his cigarette packet to further demonstrate this motion and continued. “No attempt was made by the crew to escape afterward, they were all found still strapped in. This was February Brian. The channel was freezing cold and she sank deep into the mud below. I’m not a pathologist Brian but I think it’s reasonable to assume that because of this fact they went into immediate shock and quite simply drowned in their seats.”
“Excuse me John,” I said tearfully, and stopped the conversation there, “I just need a moment,” and in trying to contain my emotion I took out my mobile phone. I rang Carlo and upon his answering I simply said, “It’s all okay Carlo. Your mother didn’t kill our father.”
The next time that Carlo and I will meet again will be as agreed, the next year on February 26th 2006 at 22.30 hours, the anniversary date of our war hero father’s flight. We will be here again, at Dover Quay, where we will jointly throw a wreath into the sea.
The memorial card will read,
In Loving Memory of Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson and the crew of the Thompson. The best rear gunner in the sky, the Magnificent Three never forgotten. Our eternal love and gratitude to you all,
Brian’s boys.
Happier times: (One) Jonathan Taylor and UNESCO poet Steve Wilkinson (right). Remembrance Day fundraising concert in aid of Help For Heroes. War poem and song: Victoria Hall, Skipton, North Yorkshire. (Two) Taken shortly before his disappearance on Sunday, 25th March (2015) Odd Jonathan, partner and friends on the steps of Buzludzha Communist House.
From L to R: The Writer; Jonathan R.P Taylor (Odd Jonathan), photographer and partner Nicola Miller, archivist and translator Radoslav Denchev and architect and restoration campaigner, Dora Ivanova. Warnings signs prevail through legal statute and forbid entry.
Picture: the Thompson, B-17F Flying Fortress
The original front cover of Brian’s 2005 book.
Top speed: 287 mph (462 km/h).
Introduced: USAAF April 1938.
Retired: 1968 (Produced: 1938 – 1945).
Manufacturer: Boeing USA
Designer: Edward Curtis Wells.
Total number built: 12,731
Please Take Care of Bethany Page 7