Aeroplane Crash Over Plumstead.

I remember one day, whilst walking home after school from Conway Primary School, we were walking up Orissa Road, alongside the back of the old Beasley's Brewery buildings.

I heard the loud throbbing sound of lots of aeroplanes' engines. Excitedly I looked up and saw lots of planes; they were all flying in formation, Suddenly, two of the planes collided with each other and then, it seemed in slow motion, wings and pieces of fuselage broke off and began to fall, spinning down to earth, followed by the two crippled planes.

Being a young child, I wondered if what I was looking at was for real! Later on, though, the evening papers were full of the tragic story, with big bold headlines reporting this spectacular air accident.

From memory, I believe that one plane crashed into the Thames and the other into the Plumstead Marshes, with the loss of at least one pilot's life.

I think I was around nine years old at the time, so this happened around 1953. Maybe they were practising their fly past routine for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II held on the 6th of June 1953.

Colin Weightman