My mother was born and brought up in Gosport, just across the water from Southampton. Indeed, I first became interested in WWII aviation from her stories of watching the RAF defending Portsmouth royal docks during the Battle of Britain.
One story she told me was of seeing German bodies wash ashore for days late in the summer; she's always claimed it was a foiled invasion attempt. Later, as I became more interested in the history and started reading up on it, I never found any mention of any invasion attempt, and discounted it to being possibly a young girl not knowing the difference between Whereat and Luftwaffe uniforms, or maybe a coastal troop ship and been bounced by bomber command (an often forgotten component of the BoB).
However, whilst reading here:
http://www.battleofbritainpress.co.uk/memories/List/0002.html( a very good BoB site, BTW);
I came across this:
"One mystery from this period that to this day I have not really found any information about occurred on 11 September 1940. We were hauled out of our beds at 0300 hours, told to get our ammunition ready and stand to. Officers came round our gun pits repeatedly and we had a visit from a Colonel Ackland, all designed to keep us on our toes. As no one was telling us anything we stated to get a bit jumpy but as time wore on we put it down to the visit of this top brass then we heard the steady roar of heavy bombers. However, we could tell almost straight away, by their engine noise that they were ours. Eventually this huge noise passed over us and across the Channel. A short while later we saw flashes in the distance and word soon spread around that we were hitting back. As each squadron came back more went out. Finally at midday we were stood down and went into Littlestone where we were told that bodies had been picked up from the sea and placed in the mortuary at new Romney. For months afterwards bodies in all stages of decomposition and burning were recovered from the Channel. It was rumoured that these bodies were linked to a German invasion force which had been bombed in the channel and it was this force that we had been called out for that night. This will always be a great mystery to us, but certainly that raid and the recovery of so many bodies shortly afterwards remains unexplained."
Any takers?
