Dogfight over Tramore in World War II

My town, Tramore, is located in a quiet and peaceful corner of Ireland and during World War II was not affected much by what was happening in the rest of the world. People were aware of the war and food was rationed, but life went on unchanged.

On Sunday morning, August 23, 1942, things took a very different turn, when many townspeople were on their way to 10am mass at the local church and heard a loud noise from a German plane being pursued by two British Spitfires. Locals had to dive to safety as bullets rained down on the street as the Junker dropped sharply in altitude and came under fire.

German Junkers 88 aircraft which came under fire from the British Spitfires force landed in a field near Carriglong. The action seen over Tramore Bay, St Otterans Terrace and the racecourse was part of a much larger series of events that began many hours earlier.

At a small airfield outside of Paris, 4 German Luftwaffe airmen: Paul Stormer (pilot), Karl Hund, Gottfried Berndt and Josef Reiser took off on a reconnaissance mission to obtain details on the port of Belfast in Northern Ireland. The Junkers 88 flew along the east coast of Ireland and was detected by many lookout posts and eventually also by British radar which scrambled through the available Spitfires to intercept them.

The first spitfire on the scene pursued the Junkers 88 inland over Co Meath and in the aerial fight took a hit and crashed to the burning ground. Pilot officer Boleslaw Sauwiak later died of his injuries in hospital.

Not long after Sauwiak crashed his plane, two more Spitfires arrived on the scene from Northern Ireland. They pursued the aircraft south, but after running out of ammunition and fuel they had to withdraw. The Junker headed towards Waterford, flying over Kildare and Kilkenny on its way back to France. As over Waterford, two more Spitfires joined the fight, this time from Wales, causing the aircraft to force-land at Tramore.

A local farmer who saw the plane crash on his land ran to help, the 4 Luftwaffe men held him at gunpoint and once he calmed them down he took them back to the farm where they were given a full Irish breakfast. Later that day, the Irish Army arrested the men and took them to the Curragh camp, where they were interned.

One of the officers, many years later, returned to Tramore to see again the great bay into which his plane crashed.