In this seventieth anniversary year of the Battle of Britain when readers are contributing their experiences for the Courier some are certain to include recollections of the September day when a crippled German bomber crash-landed in a field at Tanyard Farm, Hadlow Road, Tonbridge.

One of the crew baled out and the remaining three were "captured" by a group of Tonbridge School boys who were early on the scene with Special Constable Charles Barkaway, a local theatrical producer and a founder of the Local Amateur Musical Players.

Constable Barkaway hurried from the air raid warden post in Higham Lane opposite his family's farm, grateful to the German pilot for banking to avoid the house with his parents inside.

The parachutist, air gunner Corporal Heinrich Agel, landed on the roof of the Boiling Kettle cafe (now a petrol station) in Hildenborough and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in Canada and Scotland, returning some 40 years later to recall the incident that saved his life.

The captain of his plane ordered him to jump to avoid being killed in his turret. A Hurricane fighter caught his plane on its way to attack the RAF airfield at Henley.