Rare Spitfire floats again: tribute to pilot who never came home

A special acquisition was presented in the museum at Seppe airport on Friday afternoon: a replica photo reconnaissance aircraft from the Second World War. There is a dramatic story behind the aircraft and the pilot. “This was my uncle,” says a survivor.

The story started very small, with a mysterious piece of metal, near Bergen op Zoom. And a hiker who saw it glittering. That was Guido.

He picked it up, wiped it clean and saw a number code. It was a piece of a Spitfire. The iconic British fighter plane from World War II.

He found more pieces, including a rusted block with tubes. “This was for the oxygen tanks. A normal Spitfire has one but here there were three.” The mystery grew.

When he also painted a piece with blue, the answer came. This was a photo explorer. One that flew very high and for a long time, hence the extra oxygen on board.

“The British took twenty million aerial photographs during the Second World War. That was for planning, to see the effects of bombings and to fight the enemy better,” says Guido.

Those photos were taken by special Spitfires. Without weapons. And blue, to stand out less in the sky. “About thirty have crashed in the Netherlands and surrounding waters.”

One crashed near Bergen op Zoom and shattered into thousands of pieces. Guido found more answers in archives: it was the AA804. From pilot Charles Hall.

Parachute
Hall flew to Düsseldorf and Essen on December 28, 1941. There he had to photograph the damage from British bombings the day before.

On the way back he suffered an engine failure. Hall jumped with his parachute. The Germans caught him on Brabant soil. His plane crashed near Bergen op Zoom. And Hall ended up in the infamous Stalag Luft III prison in eastern Germany along with many other prisoners of war.

Tunnel
Over the long years of the war, the captured British soldiers secretly dug a tunnel and 80 of them escaped. Hall also escaped in this flight, which went down in history as ‘The Great Escape’. 76 British were caught and shot on Hitler’s orders. Hall also died.

When Guido discovered this he did not know what he saw. “There was a link to the Great Escape.” The story is world famous thanks to a legendary Hollywood film.

Guido got in touch with Hall’s relatives. It was niece Diana Ader. “My family knew very little. This became a fantastic journey into my uncle’s life,” says Diana Ader.

On-board guns
Guido told his story in Bergen op Zoom. He started talking to set builders from the Groot Arsenaal. They had recreated a Spitfire for the celebration of 80 years of liberation, but did not know whether they could keep it. “Demolition would be a shame,” says set designer Wim Doomen.

And so the idea arose to convert it into a photo explorer.

“We took off all the weapons and put a frame in it for strength,” Doomen explains. Thousands of split peas were used to simulate rivets. Doomen then called the aircraft his ‘Splitfire’.

They also glued an original recovered British rivet into the unit. And windows were added for the cameras.

lines of poetry
The Spitfire then moved to the Seppe Museum. The Spitfire hangs in the museum hangar there and was officially unveiled on Friday afternoon. With great interest from the many volunteers who made it possible, their proud chairman and Heritage Brabant director Patrick Timmermans who made a documentary about it.

The councilor of Halderberge who emphasized that ‘this encourages a conversation about sacrifices that others have made’.

There were impressive words from Diana Ader, niece of Charles Hall. She spoke the solemn lines of poetry: we will remember them. These were repeated en masse throughout the hangar.